Treating the Coronavirus

For those who are tracking the progress of treatments for the coronavirus, here is a recent scientific paper on the use of that anti-malarial drug… from French physicians. One understands that since President Trump touted the value of hydroxychloroquine, certain governors want to ban its use as a treatment.

Anyway, here is the paper’s title.

Clinical and microbiological effect of a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in 80 COVID-19 patients with at least a six-day follow up: an observational study Running title: Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin and COVID-19 

And, here is the summary of the results:

We need an effective treatment to cure COVID-19 patients and to decrease the virus carriage duration. In 80 in-patients receiving a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin we noted a clinical improvement in all but one 86 year-old patient who died, and one 74 yearold patient still in intensive care unit. A rapid fall of nasopharyngeal viral load tested by qPCR was noted, with 83% negative at Day7, and 93% at Day8. Virus cultures from patient respiratory samples were negative in 97.5% patients at Day5. This allowed patients to rapidly de discharge from highly contagious wards with a mean length of stay of five days. We believe other teams should urgently evaluate this cost-effective therapeutic strategy, to both avoid the spread of the disease and treat patients as soon as possible before severe respiratory irreversible complications take hold.