How many Covid-19 patients died as a result of being administered hydroxychloroquine? A French study, which offered an estimate for patients hospitalized during the first wave of the pandemic, was retracted on August 26 by the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. The editorial decision has pleased those who defend the "Raoult protocol," while it has worried some pharmacologists and epidemiologists, who claim that the withdrawal was unjustified.
Jean-Christophe Lega was careful not to hide the uncertainties surrounding the results of the study he led, which was released in early 2024. The doctor and epidemiologist from the Université Lyon-I, and his colleagues, have concluded that 17,000 deaths occurred in six countries – including 199 in France – but agreed that the large confidence interval meant that the actual number could lie between 3,000 and 30,000 deaths. He also noted that the poor quality of many databases had prevented him from making these calculations for countries where hydroxychloroquine is widely prescribed, such as Brazil and India, meaning that the number of deaths linked to this treatment must be higher. That is without counting prescriptions outside the hospital setting.
No seriously conducted study has been able to prove the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) against Covid-19 – the opposite has been demonstrated. In particular, the drug promoted by Didier Raoult in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin could present cardiac toxicity: The first deaths recorded at the beginning of 2020 by pharmacovigilance networks had in fact led the director of the IHU Méditerranée to exclude some at-risk patients from this prescription.
Lega's objective was therefore to assess the number of patients to whom the drug had been administered and, based on the induced excess mortality rate provided by a British study (Axfors et al., Nature Communications, 2021), to calculate the number who had died as a result of the treatment. This methodology was immediately attacked on social media.
"I quickly received a number of fairly standard emails, often courteous, sometimes not, questioning the integrity of our results," said the epidemiologist. His university president was also beset by criticism. This included arguments formulated by statistician Vincent Pavan, president of the Réinfo Liberté association, or circulated by sites supportive of Raoult, France-Soir and Bonsens.info, the latter announcing that it had served formal notice on the journal, through legal channels, to respond to its criticism.
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