US President Donald Trump’s Favourite Drug Hydroxychloroquine does NOT protect against Coronavirus

No Evidence Hydroxychloroquine Is Helpful In Preventing Covid-19, Study Finds.

TAKING hydroxychloroquine, Donald Trumps Covid-19 drug of choice, after being exposed to someone with Covid-19, does not protect someone from getting the disease.

That’s the conclusion of a study published yesterday involving 821 participants. All had direct exposure to a Covid-19 patient, either because they lived with one, or were a health care provider or first responder.

The study had an unusual design. “It was all web-based,” says Radha Rajasingham, an infectious disease physician at the University of Minnesota. “People would go to our website if they were interested in enrolling.”

People given hydroxychloroquine were more likely to report side-effects such as nausea and stomach pain – 40 per cent v 17 per cent. But there were no serious reactions and no heart rhythm disturbances, which is a known issue with the drug.

“While we had hoped this drug would work in this context, our study demonstrates that hydroxychloroquine is no better than a placebo when used as post-exposure prophylaxis within four days of exposure to someone infected with the new coronavirus,” said Dr Todd Lee, an associate professor of medicine, division of infectious diseases at McGill University in Canada and one of the lead authors of the study.