Are hydrochloroquin and azithromycin the cure for Covid-19?

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal quoted Colyer, noting that “one day we will look backward in awe” since there is now new data supporting this treatment.

“Kansas City area physicians, including Joe Brewer, Dan Hinthorn and me, continue to treat many patients, and some have shown improvement. Major medical centers including the University of Washington and Mass General have added hydroxychloroquine to treatment options.”

Doctors are using two drugs in combination — hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, to treat patients with advanced Covid-19 symptoms. “We use a regimen reported in a recent open-label trial in Marseille, France, which was updated March 26, and which doctors may modify in any given case.”

Clinical information that has emerged from the initial Chinese outbreak, show that Wuhan doctors observed that patients with lupus—a disease for which hydroxychloroquine is a common treatment, did not seem to develop Covid-19.

Of 178 hospital patients in Wuhan who tested positive, none had lupus and none were on hydroxychloroquine. None of the dermatology department’s 80 lupus patients were infected with the novel Coronavirus. The Wuhan doctors then decided to treat 20 Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine.

“Clinical symptoms improved significantly in 1 to 2 days. After five days of chest CT examination, 19 cases showed significant absorption improvement.”

Azithromycin, an antibiotic was combined with hydroxychloroquine. The French study showed that 57 percent of 14 Covid-19 patients receiving hydroxychloroquine without azithromycin tested negative for the virus on a nasal swab on day six. But 100 percent of the six patients who received both tested negative on day six.

Of the 16 infected patients at another hospital who did not receive either treatment, only 12 percent tested negative on day six. Although these are small samples, they are significant.

The authors of the French study published the results of an additional 80 hospitalized patients receiving a combination of both drugs last week. By day eight of treatment, 93 percent showed a negative nasopharyngeal swab for the virus.

“This allowed patients to rapidly be discharged from highly contagious wards with a mean length of stay of five days. 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.”

For several weeks, French doctor Professor Didier Raoult has been at the heart of this debate. The popular infectious disease specialist advocates the use of these drugs to treat the novel Coronavirus. The use of this antimalarial drug, which was recently authorized by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, has been violently attacked by certain personalities close to Big Pharma.

Invited to LCI, ex-MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit did not hesitate to harshly insult the professor.

For several weeks now, Professor Raoult has been touting the merits of chloroquine, but those within the scientific community working for Big Pharma, have complained about many “side effects”. On March 16, the infectious disease specialist announced that he had obtained a 75 percent rate of cured patients by using chloroquine on 24 patients at his Marseille hospital.

Last week, Raoult walked out of Emmanuel Macron’s Scientific Council and published a new study, this time based on 80 patients and attesting to the effectiveness of chloroquine coupled with the antibiotic in the fight against Covid-19. Finally, on March 26, the French government authorized the use of this treatment. The United States and Russia have also decided to use it to treat hospital patients.

Professor Didier Raoult, who is one of the world’s top 5 scientists on communicable diseases, has argued that the approach of mass quarantine is both inefficient and outdated and that large-scale testing and treatment of suspected cases achieves far better results.

Early on, Raoult suggested the use of hydroxychloroquine (Chloroquine or Plaquenil), a well-known, simple, and inexpensive drug, has shown efficacy with previous Coronaviruses such as SARS.

By mid-February 2020, clinical trials at his institute and in China already confirmed that the drug could reduce the viral load and bring spectacular improvement. The Chinese scientists published their first trials on more than 100 patients and announced that the Chinese National Health Commission would recommend Chloroquine in their new guidelines to treat Covid-19.