A drug infamously touted by Donald Trump has been linked to nearly 17,000 Covid deaths in a new scientific study.
Researchers say that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was prescribed to patients during the first wave of Covid-19 “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits.”
The French study estimated that 16,990 patients in the US, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Turkey may have died as a result of the drug.
The study has been published in the February issue of Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
Researchers say the data used comes from a study published in the Nature scientific journal, which reported that there was an 11 per cent increase in mortality rate linked to the drug’s prescription.
Unfortunately, a lot of patients didn’t actually have many options and were prescribed it without asking. In the early days of the pandemic, doctors were basically just throwing everything they could at it, to see what worked. If you got a conservative doctor, there was a good chance that you’d be prescribed it without ever asking for it.
Because all the doctors were flying blind, but hey the news says this drug works so we might as well try it. They’re probably going to die without treatment anyways, so worst case scenario the result is the same as if they weren’t taking it. Nowhere to go but up, right? A lot of patients basically didn’t have a say, because they were hospitalized.