Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: COVID-19 antidote?

EMERGENCY-USE AUTHORISATION: A limited emergency-use authorization for two antimalarial drugs touted as game-changers by President Donald Trump has been issued by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat coronavirus patients.

POTENTIAL COVID-19 TREATMENTS: On Sunday, March 30, 2020, the US Department of Health and Human Services detailed recent donations of medicine to a national stockpile – including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, both being investigated as potential COVID-19 treatments. It said the FDA had allowed them "to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible."

ENDORSEMENT: US President Donald Trump said last week that the two anti-malaria drugs could treat severe COVID-19 cases, despite scientists warning against the dangers of overhyping unproven treatments.

ON MARCH 21, 2020, US President Donald Trump tweeted: "HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents)..."

FRENCH STUDY: Out of the 80 patients who received a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, Raoult and his team found a clinical improvement in all but one patient, 86, who died. One 74-year-old patient was still in the ICU at the time the study was published.

REPURPOSED DRUG: A combo of pictures showing chroloquine from different manufacturers. Around the world, countries are expanding access to hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, related compounds that are synthetic forms of quinine, which come from cinchona trees and have been used for centuries to treat malaria.Bahrain is one of the first countries to test hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, having first used the drug on February 26, two days after registering its first case of the coronavirus.