We could know within two weeks whether Professor Didier Raoult, the French virologist who heads the Mediterranean infectious and tropical disease institute in Marseille, will go down in history as the man who saved the world from Covid-19, or will be dismissed as an arrogant, misguided scientist who raised false hopes.
Raoult administered a cocktail of hydroxycloroquine, a less toxic derivative of chloroquine, used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and azithromycin, an antibiotic used against bacterial pneumonia, to 24 Covid-19 patients.
After receiving 600mg of Plaquenil (one of the commercial names for chloroquine) and 250mg of azithromycin for six days, three-quarters of patients tested negative for the virus, while 90 per cent of the control group who did not take the drugs still tested positive.
On February 25th, Raoult spoke of Chinese experiments with hydroxycloroquine in a video titled “Coronavirus: endgame!” He hastily conducted his own clinical study and revealed the results in a second video on March 16th.
US president Donald Trump apparently learned of Raoult’s experiment through a Twitter post by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. On March 20th, Trump wrongly claimed in a White House press briefing that the US Food and Drug Administration had approved what he called “the very powerful” drug chloroquine to treat Covid-19.
Trump was corrected by Dr Anthony Fauci, a top expert on infectious disease and a pillar of the fight against coronavirus. But Trump persisted, tweeting the following day that “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”
As reported in this newspaper on Monday, Brazil’s populist president Jair Bolsonaro ignored warnings from the health regulator and ordered the army to step up the production of chloroquine.
Pharmacies in west Africa, where chloroquine has been used for decades to treat malaria, saw a run on the drug. The government of Morocco purchased the entire stock of chloroquine produced by the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi in Casablanca. Some French hospitals are administering Plaquenil out of “compassion” for the families of Covid-19 patients.