Another infectious disease specialist defends chloroquine to treat Covid-19

It is “the beginning of the end of the pandemic. I am very serious “. Doctor Stephen Smith praised the effectiveness of the antibiotic composed of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin on Fox News television channel.

According to Stephen Smith, 72 of his Covid-19 patients took the antibiotic for at least five days and none had to be intubated afterwards. “According to the research of my sons Leon and Hunter, the chances of that happening are 0.00-something,” he says, before adding “it’s ridiculously low”.

Doctor Smith also thinks that his method and the treatment he administered supports the research carried out by Professor Didier Raoult, a French professor who advocates chloroquine as a solution to Covid-19 but who is being smeared in the mainstream media.

Despite these spectacular results, “more research” is needed to develop a cure for the Coronavirus according to the WHO. Authorities in several countries and the scientific community say a vaccine against Covid-19 will not be available until 2021.

According to Raoult, this attitude is essentially similar to testing the need for a parachute. He noted with irony that those who jumped from a plane without it, would not survive.

Meanwhile, doctors in France have petitioned government to allow proper and widespread use of the hydroxychloroquine treatment regimen.

Their petition was published by French daily Le Parisien. Recent Chinese data has suggested the effectiveness of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine in the laboratory and in patients. A study published by Chen et al. [Efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19: results of a randomized clinical trial] shows the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19 suffering from moderately severe pneumonia; the few patients who worsened did not receive treatment.

On March 17, 2020, the Italian drug agency, considering the health emergency, authorized the prescription of hydroxychloroquine by all doctors, including city doctors.

The US Food and Drug Administration recently authorized the use of several drugs such as hydroxychloroquine in the United States. The FDA has allowed all American hospital doctors to prescribe these two drugs, including outside of therapeutic trials. It requests, as in Italy, that all the medical data of the patients treated be collected in order to analyze them.

Portugal has also just recommended these treatments for cases of Covid-19 with pneumonia.

However, the decree in force in France No. 2020/337 of March 26, 2020 only allows the use of hydroxychloroquine after … oxygen-demanding pneumonia or organ failure.

At this late stage of the disease, this treatment may be ineffective, the petitioners cautioned. If the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine is confirmed, the protocol will have to be opened quickly to all doctors to avoid the saturation of hospitals.

At the end of March, the American president was also very confident about its use, reported France 24. “There is a good chance that this can have a huge impact. It would be a gift from heaven if it worked,” he said.

The FDA has nevertheless decided to regulate its use, since chloroquine will only be prescribed by doctors “to adolescent and adult hospitalized patients with Covid-19, in an appropriate manner, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible”.

It is also a way of telling the general public not to self-medicate, following the death of an Arizona resident who had decided to ingest chloroquine phosphate, a product used to disinfect aquariums.

Donald Trump announced the extension of “social distancing” until April 30. There are more than 312 000 recorded cases and nearly 8 500 people have died in the US, with 1 344 of those reported on Saturday. It is country’s largest single-day death toll.

President Trump emphasized the need to “get back to work” at a Coronavirus Task Force meeting. “The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself, we’ve got to get our country open,” Trump said.