Researchers in France have issued a statement detailing how a combination of antimalarial medication and antibiotics could be a vital weapon in the battle against coronavirus.
In the statement, which was released Sunday, IHU-Méditerranée Infection in Marseille described:
· For all febrile patients who come to consult, to carry out tests for the diagnosis of infection with Covid 19;
· For all infected patients, many of whom are not very symptomatic, have lung lesions on the CT scan, to propose the disease as soon as possible, as soon as the diagnosis is made: a treatment with the hydroxychloroquine combination (200 mg x 3 per day for 10 days) + Azithromycin (500 mg on the 1st day then 250 mg per day for 5 more days), as part of the precautions for use of this association (including an electrocardiogram on D0 and D2), and outside of marketing authorization. In cases of severe pneumonia, a broad-spectrum antibiotic is also used.
“We believe that it is not ethical that this association should not be systematically included in therapeutic trials concerning the treatment of Covid-19 infection in France”.
As per abstract of their research study, researchers noted that patients “showed a significant reduction of the viral carriage,” six days after treatment with the two drugs began, and “much lower average carrying duration,” compared to untreated patients.
Six patients were asymptomatic, 22 had upper respiratory tract infection symptoms and eight had lower respiratory tract infection symptoms. Twenty cases were treated in this study and showed a significant reduction of the viral carriage at D6-post inclusion compared to controls, and much lower average carrying duration than reported of untreated patients in the literature. Azithromycin added to hydroxychloroquine was significantly more efficient for virus elimination.
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