A small, non-peer-reviewed study is circulating online, with sharers claiming that it shows that high doses of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) can increase COVID-19 survival rates by 200 percent. Critics of the study point out that the study did not test the effects of the drug in a broad group of COVID-19 patients, but merely reviewed data from a small group of severely ill COVID-19 patients, most of whom received HCQ in combination with an antibiotic. Of the 37 patients who received a high total dose of HCQ plus antibiotics, around half survived, compared to about 17 percent of the patients who did not receive the high dose. Although the survival rate in the small group given high-dose treatments was higher than in other patients in the study, results from the non-controlled, non-randomized study cannot be applied to the larger population.
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