The new study, of which the abstract was released today, was performed at IHU Méditerranée Infection, Marseille, France. A cohort of 1061 COVID-19 patients, treated for at least 3 days with the Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin (HCQ-AZ) combination and a follow-up of at least 9 days was investigated.
Key findings are:
No cardiac toxicity was observed.
A good clinical outcome and virological cure was obtained in 973 patients within 10 days (91.7%).
A poor outcome was observed for 46 patients (4.3%); 10 were transferred to intensive care units, 5 patients died (0.47%) (74-95 years old) and 31 required 10 days of hospitalization or more.
The authors conclude that:
“The HCQ-AZ combination, when started immediately after diagnosis, is a safe and efficient treatment for COVID-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5%, in elderly patients. It avoids worsening and clears virus persistence and contagiosity in most cases.”
And, there is Dr. Wallace, Cedar-Sinai, he has >2000 Lupus patients under his care and he wrote a letter to the FDA and sent copies to several other doctors that to date not one of his thousands of patients on HCQ has to date come down with the Wuhan Virus.
Nor, has there been a single patient among his 2000+ patients to ever experience any heart issues.
His practice is more than 35 years and counting.
In Marseille the IHU-Méditerrannée Infection, the institute where dr Raoult is employed, has up until midday 11 April treated 2401 cases of COVID19 with the HCQ/AZ combination with 10 fatalities (0.4%). In the state and university hospitals in Marseille not affiliated with this institute 4100 cases have been treated with 63 deaths (1.5%).
It should be noted that both results so far are good.
Obviously factors such as age, comorbidities, other medication etc must be taken into account when comparing the two populations, however just making an initial comparison between the rough numbers tells us that the likelihood of such a difference occurring by chance alone is less than 0.0002 (ie 2 chances in 10 000).
Again, calculating from the rough numbers alone, dr Raoult's institute ought to have seen 37 fatalities. Thus, 27 people were saved by treating 2401 patients to a cost in medication per saved patient of less than $1800.
Now, we know from the latest publication by dr Raoult that he certainly did also treat the elderly and patients with other illnesses. So, what is going on here - and why are the leading medical authorities so negative?
PS Yes, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have side effects, and some are serious. However, in almost all cases I've been able to find they have either been described in conjunction with malaria treatment where the acute dosage is many times what has been proposed for the COVID19 patients, or they have occurred only after many years during chronic treatment (RA, lupus) with doses more reminicient of what is given to the COVID19-patients for a few days up to a week.*
* The problems of side effects were actually addressed in a press release from the IHU-MI institute already February 27. I can only assume the fact that it was in french is the reason for it never seemed to register with the critics of the HCQ use. (Yes, sarcasm intended.)
Below is a translation of the press release. Note the discussion re the dosage.
Marseille, February 27, 2020
Chloroquine and Coronavirus, real or fake news
Three publications from Chinese teams working on Coronavirus 2019-nCoV are currently available in the literature. The first, in Cell Research, reports the activity of Remdesivir and Chloroquine against the Chinese Coronavirus. It shows that both are very effective in vitro. The authors conclude their paper by recommending that these drugs be tried in a clinical setting (1).
A second pre-publication report, published in BioScience Trends, reports that the first evaluation in clinical trials of Chloroquine, which includes analysis of the results of more than 100 patients, shows that Chloroquine is superior to the control treatment. It prevented the worsening of pneumonia, improved the results of radiological pulmonary examinations, it lead to the elimination of the virus and it decreased the duration of the disease.
No side effects were observed. Given the in vitro efficacy, the authors sought a concentration of 1.1 mmol/ml, or 0.3mg/l. A dosage of three tablets of Plaquenil (OH Chloroquine) 600mg/d, which we use daily, allow us to obtain a concentration of 1mg/l, or 3 times the dose needed to reach this concentration.
After analyzing these findings, a Chinese committee including government experts, regulators and leading clinical trial investigators concluded that Chloroquine provided clinical activity against the virus. The drug will be part of the next version of the guidelines for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia caused by this virus which is published by the Public Health Commission of the Republic of China (2).
Dr. Zhong Nanshan (3), President of the Chinese Medical Association (2005-2009), Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Thoracic Disease, Director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said in a february 27, 2020 press conference that Chloroquine has a positive effect and that patients were no longer carrying the virus after 4 days (4).
References:
1: “Remdesivir and Chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) in vitro,” January 25 20020, Cell Research, Nature.
2: “Breakthrough: Chloroquine phosphate has shown apparent efficacy in treatment of COVID-19 associated pneumonia in clinical studies,” Jianjun Gao and at, February 19 2020, Advanced Publication, BioScience Trends.
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhong_Nanshan
4: https://www.france24.com/en/20200227-china-virus-expert-says-earlier-action-would-have-reduced-infections
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/chloroquine-et-coronavirus-vraie-ou-fake-news/
Update: So far in Marseille IHU-MI has treated 2570 patients for more than 3 days with CQ and AZ. Totalt number of fatalities: 10. This gives a preliminary fatality rate of less than 4‰ (<0.4%).
there is some retraction going on
I still would ask for Trumps drug