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Comment by bobowzki | Hacker News Reader

Ok so I'm a Swedish intensivist working i Göteborg.

We currently don't use chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid-19 because:

1. We tried it and have not noticed any obvious positive effect. 2. No serious study have been able to replicate the success of the first French (severly flawed) study. 3. Potential severe sideeffects.

Awaiting the completion of ongoing studies we are using other treatment protocols. Should chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine be shown to improve outcome we will of course use it.

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Do you know about any treatment of chloroquine in combination with zinc to stop the replication of the virus? Zinc to stop RNA copying , chloroquine to let zinc into the cells

You tested hydroxychloroquine only or complemented with azithromycin as recommended by "the first French (severly flawed) study" for early symptoms as a containment measure, not a cure ?

I ask because you say you tried but you're not saying what you've tried exactly. Please don't take it personally, It's just I which people would be much more precise when talking about this matter.

The study might very well be flawed and/or plain wrong. But there is also a lot of people misrepresenting it. Which does not help at all.

Also of note, the European study left out azithromycin and is only conduct on advanced cases.

Edit: In lower comments (for now I hope) a more detailed, and thus interesting, info in the comment's link : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22793659

Do you mean "containment" as in "halt/retard further development" or as in "halt/retard spread"? The former could be useful for high-risk individuals, the latter is probably only of mild interest (those that would be getting this are already in hospital containment, so it would be an attempt to increase health-care worker safety).

Assuming "the European study" and "the first French (severly flawed) study" are referring to the same thing, then that does indeed sound very broken: Recommending combination with azithromycin, and leaving it out themselves, leaves that recommendation without any value.

The alleged effect of the cocktail is to lower the viral charge of the patient. With less viruses in the body, the patient is supposed to fight it better and are much less contagious combined with early testing it would be helping in preventing/retarding the spread. I suppose high-risk individual would eventually get infected but with hospital less overloaded they would be treated better.

No the European "big" study and the French very small study are not the same. But they are not testing the same thing and can't possibly get the same result.

Again, I'm not endorsing the French study, but I also know that the French government and the famous doctor are not exactly of the same political color and there is petty political in-fighting going on ...

Thank you for your comment, very much appreciated. I want to read the article but it's not written in English.

HCQ caused heart problems also? Afaik only CQ does. Most use HCQ (Plaquenil), not CQ, which is risky.

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