Treatment of Covid-19 with Chloroquine: Is the Controversy Well-founded?

As France and Europe experience their first days of historical confinement, the question logically emerges: where are we in the development of a treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV -2? Didier Raoult, director of the IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseille and member of the scientific council dedicated to the coronavirus, says he is able to cure Covid-19, thanks to the use of chloroquine.

Recently, in a video presentation meeting a “viral” success on social networks, the professor exposes indeed the positive results of his clinical trials: on 24 patients with coronavirus, three quarters were cured in six days after receiving chloroquine.

SUCCESS OF CLINICAL TRIALS, AND AFTER?

Sibeth Ndiaye

Since Monday, the course of events seems to prove him right: after these “tests deemed promising”, the French laboratory Sanofi said it was ready this Tuesday March 17 to offer the State doses of Plaquenil, an anti-malaria treatment whose active substance is chloroquine, for 300,000 patients.

” In agreement with Professor Raoult, the Ministry of Health wanted us to be able to extend this clinical trial.”

Sibeth Ndiaye

WHAT IS CHLOROQUIN?

What is this famous remedy? Hydroxychloroquine, a derivative of chloroquine, is an anti-malarial drug, the active ingredient in drugs marketed under the name of Plaquenil. This molecule would be formidable against Covid-19. In his presentation on Monday March 16, Professor Raoult notes: “It is spectacular, the average viral load with this virus is normally 20 days.

We could compare the negativation of viral carriage in patients who followed the protocol, with patients from Avignon and Nice who did not receive the treatment. Those who have not received Plaquenil still carry 90% of the virus after six days, while those who have received treatment are 25% positive. “

CHLOROQUIN / AZITHROMYCIN

Contacted by Marianne, the professor explained to us the essential novelty of his tests: the discovery of the effectiveness of the combination of another drug with chloroquine: azithromycin, an antibiotic against bacterial pneumonia. Something he details in another video, dated March 17. He explains to Marianne: “We knew that it was an effective antiviral, that it worked on the Zika virus.

It has been used by millions of people. We discovered its anti-bacterial, but also anti-viral effectiveness. We decided in our experiments to add a treatment of Azythromicyne to avoid bacterial infections. The results are therefore even more spectacular when we add azithromycin to hydroxychloroquine “.

“”All this is very new, it took patients, when we started to have them, we validated the therapeutic protocol, then we communicated the results then.”

Pr. RAOULT Didier
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