HCQ and AZ study shows benefit for early CovId-19 treatment

kenh writes: Over at science direct.com they report on a French "retrospective" study of just over 1,000 patients across all age groups with very good results. From the paper:

Results A total of 1061 patients were included in this analysis (46.4% male, mean age 43.6 years – range 14–95 years). Good clinical outcome and virological cure were obtained in 973 patients within 10 days (91.7%). Prolonged viral carriage was observed in 47 patients (4.4%) and was associated to a higher viral load at diagnosis (pA poor clinical outcome (PClinO) was observed for 46 patients (4.3%) and 8 died (0.75%) (74–95 years old). All deaths resulted from respiratory failure and not from cardiac toxicity. Five patients are still hospitalized (98.7% of patients cured so far). PClinO was associated with older age (OR 1.11), severity at admission (OR 10.05) and low HCQ serum concentration. PClinO was independently associated with the use of selective beta-blocking agents and angiotensin II receptor blockers (p less than .05). A total of 2.3% of patients reported mild adverse events (gastrointestinal or skin symptoms, headache, insomnia and transient blurred vision).

Conclusion Administration of the HCQ+AZ combination before COVID-19 complications occur is safe and associated with very low fatality rate in patients.