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Efficacy and safety of in-hospital treatment of Covid-19 infection with low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in hospitalized patients: A retrospective controlled cohort study

Highlights

Retrospective study of 3885 patients (352 treatment, 3533 control).
Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin versus standard of care.
OR for mortality in the treatment group was 0.635 vs controls. This survival benefit was consistent in all age groups.
No torsade de pointes or malignant ventricular arrhythmias observed during treatment. ...

Conclusion

Treatment of COVID-19 using a combination of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was safe and was associated with a statistically significant mortality benefit in the treatment of COVID-19 infection in hospitalized patients. Our findings do not support the current negative recommendations regarding this treatment.

Conclusion

Overall, this study represents the largest single-center study evaluating HCQ-AZ in the treatment of COVID-19. Similarly, to other large observational studies, it concludes that HCQ would have saved lives. In a spirit of open science, we encourage investigators to re-analyze, similar FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) databases and to report their findings.

SENATOR RON JOHNSON: Our next presenter is Dr. Harvey Risch. Dr. Risch is a professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.[1] He has been a university epidemiologist for more than 40 years and is a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. After getting his MD degree he completed a PhD in mathematical modeling of infectious epidemics. He has published more than 400 scientific research papers that have been cited more than 44,000 times.

I just, quick little aside here, Dr. Risch and Dr. McCullough joined me with Dr. George Fareed who can't be with us today, in November of 2020, in my first hearing on early treatment.[2] Following that, the New York Times published a article, a column written by the Democrat witness of that hearing, Dr. Ashish Jha, who had never treated a covid patient, I actually read an article later, he holed up in his apartment for like over a year til he got a vaccine. But the New York Times titled that paper, or that column, "The Snake-Oil Salesmen of the Senate."[3]

I want people to know that because, as you listen to Dr. McCullough, as you listen to Dr. Risch, ask yourself, do they really seem to be snake-oil salesmen to you? They seem to be eminently qualified professionals, that again, in Dr. McCullough's case, has had the courage and compassion to actually treat covid patients. Dr. Risch.

1:02:21
DR. HARVEY RISCH: Thank you, Senator, colleagues, listeners. It's my honor to be addressing you today and to answer questions later.

We heard at the beginning of the pandemic that one of the medications that has been used in early treatment, hydroxychloroquine or HCQ, was a game changer and would be effective in the treatment of covid outpatients starting during the first few days of the illness. And then we heard study after study, and media report after media report, saying that HCQ doesn't work. These negative claims continued for months until the media got bored with all this and then acted as if the case were closed.

However, this was a sham.

The media reports never covered how the negative studies were actually fake studies. While they did cover the Surgisphere fraud[4], both the study that was published that was retracted but that managed to change the WHO's policy before it got retracted, and the media never covered how the randomized trials that were put out that were supposedly informative about the lack of benefit of hydroxychloroquine had hid their positive results, were designed for low-risk people who never had any real risk for hospitalization or death outcomes, were not blinded, or had no idea who their Internet participants really were, or any of the other numerous flaws that made them essentially irrelevant.

And the media studiously avoided covering the 10 proper trials of hydroxychloroquine outpatient use that showed significant benefit for hospitalization and mortality.

[turns to chart on display]

And just as a quick aside, the top two figures are for hydroxychloroquine for hospitalization risk and mortality risk. To the left of the vertical line means benefit. The diamond means how big the error, the range of possible values are. There's very significant 50% reduced risk for hospitalization, 75% reduced risk of mortality. And just for comparison, you can see very similar results for ivermectin in the bottom two trials. OK. This is real evidence. This is real scientific evidence.

Now the media has not reported any of these studies, but that does not make them nonexistent. These studies involve, the hydroxychloroquine studies involve more than 40,000 patients including nation-wide studies in two countries. So we see here that early hydroxychloroquine use dramatically reduces the risk of hospitalization and mortality. Now we could later, or never if you want, discuss randomized versus nonrandomized trials, the scientific issues involved in that, but what you've seen here is essentially scientific proof.

Given that, why aren't doctors across the US actually prescribing hydroxychloroquine as part of early outpatient treatment? Well, in fact, early in 2020 doctors did start using hydroxychloroquine in outpatients. But this was short-circuited by an act of FDA and BARDA[5] employees to use the Emergency Use Authorization regulations to block hydroxychloroquine use in outpatients except in randomized trials. And these trials that are the same ones that would be cut off by participant fear because of the Surgiphere papers.

And then the FDA mounted its biggest fraud of all times—

[Dr. Risch stands up, turns around, brings forward another large chart, then resumes his seat]

—by putting up this warning. This warning says, FDA cautions against the use of hydroxychloroquine in outpatients outside of the hospital setting. But then, in the justification, it says, "We base this on information to treat hospitalized patients."

Hospital disease, as we'll hear, and as we know from 2 years of dealing with covid, is a completely different illness treated with different drugs, different medications, in the hospital. Outpatient disease is flu-like, hospital disease is a florid pneumonia. And so the fact that the FDA would base recommendations and warnings on hospital disease, which is a totally different disease than outpatient disease, is a fraud.

This website is still there today and constitutes an outright fraud. OK. This basically scared everyone across the country against using this, on the basis of this fraudulent website.

Now Senator Johnson has twice demanded from the FDA, by in writing, to release the data that they relied upon to make this claim that, of warning, and twice the FDA refused.

So at this point, we know it works, we have lots of medicines, not just hydroxychloroquine, not just ivermectin for that matter, that need to be used. And the FDA has to be held accountable for this website.