Chloroquine treatment dramatically shortened period of illness in patients with COVID-19: French report leads to authorization to treat patients there

(image courtesy of pixabay.com and tdd20)

France’s director-general of health has been quoted as saying this new authorization will allow treatment of novel coronavirus patients while retaining supplies of chloroquine needed for those already on the drug for lupus or malaria.  A study of eighty patients showed that treatment shortened the time to recovery from an average of fourteen days to five.  Those dramatic results suggest that this, as yet unproven, drug may be sufficiently effective to justify its potential toxicity.  Chloroquine’s therapeutic index (the difference between the effective dose and the toxic dose) is low; just three times the dose needed to treat illness is enough to cause life-threatening toxicity.  This report comes from France 24 English through the International Business Times.

If this report is what prompted France to make chloroquine widely available to treat novel coronavirus and led the FDA to approve it, then I take back what I said about pressure from our Commander-in-Cheat.  I could be wrong, but I suspect that they may have acted before they heard from France because Himself, some days ago, touted chloroquine on his Twitter account as a miracle cure.  What do I know?  All I know is what I read in the newspaper.