Researchers at the Henry Ford Health System in Southeast Michigan have found that early administration of the drug hydroxychloroquine makes hospitalized patients substantially less likely to die.
The study, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, determined that hydroxychloroquine provided a “66% hazard ratio reduction,” and hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin a 71 percent reduction, compared to neither treatment.
In-hospital mortality was 18.1 percent overall; 13.5 percent with just hydroxychloroquine, 22.4 percent with azithromycin alone, and 26.4 percent with neither drug. “Prospective trials are needed” for further review, the researchers note, even as they concluded: “In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality.”
“Our results do differ from some other studies,” Dr. Marcus Zervos, who heads the hospital’s infectious diseases unit, said at a news conference. “What we think was important in ours … is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with COVID.”
A statement from the Trump campaign hailed the study as “fantastic news.”
“Fortunately, the Trump Administration secured a massive supply of hydroxychloroquine for the national stockpile months ago,” a statement read. “Yet this is the same drug that the media and the Biden campaign spent weeks trying to discredit and spread fear and doubt around because President Trump dared to mention it as a potential treatment for coronavirus.”
It added: “The new study from the Henry Ford Health System should be a clear message to the media and the Democrats: stop the bizarre attempts to discredit hydroxychloroquine to satisfy your own anti-Trump agenda. It may be costing lives.”
The findings, conservatives said, highlighted efforts by media partisans to undermine confidence in the drug simply to undercut the president.
“So fewer people died because they took the drug @realDonaldTrump suggested…. Thank you, POTUS for doing the right thing even in the face of a DC culture attacking you no matter what you do,” wrote former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.
The Federalist’s Sean Davis added: “Media and incompetent corrupt government officials lied to you about social distancing. They lied to you about hydroxychloroquine. They lied to you about risks to children and the general population. They lied not to help you, but to control you, and they’re not going to stop.”
At a March 19 White House briefing, Trump had remarked: “Now, a drug called chloroquine, and some people would add to it, hydroxychloroquine, so chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine … [has] shown very encouraging, very, very encouraging early results.” The president acknowledged that the drug may not “go as planned” and that more testing was needed, but that “we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.”
