Donald J. Trump was scorned by the media and disavowed by social media fact-checkers when on July 28th, 2020, he touted hydroxychloroquine after studies were showing the drug worked to help critical COVID-19 patients recover. Trump had said prior he was taking the medicine as a COVID-19 prophylactic.
Now, a study of 255 critical patients on ventilators might prove the former President correct. The study shows two things. Hydroxychloroquine worked and the liberal media and Democrats may have cost tens of thousands of lives by lobbying against the treatment during the pandemic.
“This observational study looked at 255 COVID19 patients who required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) during the first two months of the US pandemic. Through comprehensive, longitudinal evaluation and new consideration of all the data, we were able to better describe and understand factors affecting outcome after intubation,” the study reported.
It was conducted at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, a 557-bed, teaching medical center in Livingston, New Jersey. In the end, researchers found patients who were given hydroxychloroquine had a better survival right over those who were not.
“Using the hospital’s discharge coding data, we identified 255 Covid patients, who were admitted by May 1, 2020 and required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Ethical approval for the study was granted by the hospital’s Institutional Review Board,” the report read.
By discharge or Day 90, 78.2% of the cohort expired. The most common pre-existing conditions were hypertension, (63.5%), diabetes (59.2%) and obesity (50.4%). Age correlated with death. Comorbidities and clinical status on presentation were not predictive of outcome. Admission markers of inflammation were universally elevated (>96%). The cohort’s weight range was nearly 7-fold. Causal modeling establishes that weight-adjusted HCQ and AZM therapy improves survival by over 100%. QTc prolongation did not correlate with cumulative HCQ dose or HCQ serum levels.
“By considering more factors and using new methods, we found that when increased doses of co-administered HCQ and AZM were associated with >100% increase in survival,” the study reported.
You can read the full study here.