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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

I found this "Some centers and even national guidelines, such as those in Italy, have recommended treatment with lopinavir-ritonavir for patients with COVID-19 infection."

Not sure what to make of this. Can this to some extent explain the huge differences in death rate between Italy and Germany?

Source: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85499

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> Can this to some extent explain the huge differences in death rate between Italy and Germany?

Italy has a couple severe disadvantages compared to Germany:

- since the financial crisis young ppl are forced to live with their parents and often enough grandparents in cramped conditions due to exploded rents - which means that symptomless infected can spread coronavirus in their families

- Italy's healthcare system has been wrecked by forced austerity after the financial crisis - it's exactly what everyone warned of back at the time.

- many young nurses and other medical staff have fled to Germany and other countries for better pay

As far as the netherlands are concerned, Lopinavir is now removed from their interim guidelines. The first line treatement is now hydroxichloroquine/chloroquine with maybe remdesivir for severe cases.

Source (in Dutch): https://swab.nl/nl/covid-19

But yes in Italy the current guidelines (which are still dated 13 February still mention lopinavir).

Source (in Italian): http://www.simit.org/medias/1569-covid19-vademecum-13-03-202...

It has also been removed from guidelines from Belgium: source (English) : https://epidemio.wiv-isp.be/ID/Documents/Covid19/COVID-19_In...

I think the odd case is France wich I think is still not having Chloroquine/Hydroxichloroquine in their guidelines as of today.

I was not able to find the german guidelines.

Hopefully they're documenting their results with chloroquine to help have a better understanding.

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