Let's revisit hydroxychloroquine, one more time. Two recent publications both show hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin treatment had no benefit for Covid-19 patients.
One study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) looked at 1438 patients. It concluded that treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or both, compared with neither treatment, was not significantly associated with differences in in-hospital mortality.
This study examines associations between use of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or both and in-hospital mortality, ECG changes, and cardiac arrest among patients with COVID-19 hospitalized in the metropolitan New York area in March 2020.
jamanetwork.com
The other study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) looked at 1376 patients. It concluded that hydroxychloroquine neither reduced nor increased risks of intubation (ventilator assisted breathing) or death among Covid-19 patients.
These studies are only observational. Neither of them were formal clinical trials, where patients with similar characteristics, were randomly chosen to receive hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, or a control treatment. But they both involved such large numbers of patients that their results cannot be ignored. Large randomized, controlled clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine ± azithromycin are ongoing, and they will provide definitive results. It's easy to predict that these trials will put the final nail in the coffin for these treatments for Covid-19.
Trump and Faux News were absolutely reckless and irresponsible to promote those drugs as treatments for Covid-19. These clinical results should be rubbed in their faces so they cannot ignore or deny their role in promoting such snake oil.