I don't think there is much doubt left about it's efficiency at this stage. Hydroxichloroquine is much safer than chloroquine and it's just a 5 day course at pretty low dosage (2x400mg on day1 as a charge dose, then 2x200mg for 4 days).
More importantly, the drug is readily available, mass producded and doesn't cost 300$+/box like lopinavir/ritonavir. This drug isn't also 100% experimental and probably in the 3 digits rangs like remdesivir.
The only real issue is that with a lot of doctors using it, the temporary shortage of the drug could be troublesome for many Lupus patients around the world who depend on Plaquenil for their management.
Yes chloroquine has been shown effective in vitro (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0). Yes hydroxichloroquine has been shown effective in vitro very recently as well (https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...).
Yes both compounds are already actively being used and approved for use by Asian and EU countries against Covid19:
Here are the Netherlands treatment guidelines (in Dutch): https://lci.rivm.nl/covid-19/bijlage/medicamenteuze-behandel...
Here are the Italy treatment guidelines (in Italian): http://www.simit.org/medias/1555-covid19-linee-guida-trattam...
How they found out about it: https://www.jqknews.com/news/388543-The_novel_coronavirus_pn...
Approval and recommendation of the chinese: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32075365-expert-consensus-on... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32074550-breakthrough-chloro...
I don't think there is much doubt left about it's efficiency at this stage. Hydroxichloroquine is much safer than chloroquine and it's just a 5 day course at pretty low dosage (2x400mg on day1 as a charge dose, then 2x200mg for 4 days).
More importantly, the drug is readily available, mass producded and doesn't cost 300$+/box like lopinavir/ritonavir. This drug isn't also 100% experimental and probably in the 3 digits rangs like remdesivir.
The only real issue is that with a lot of doctors using it, the temporary shortage of the drug could be troublesome for many Lupus patients around the world who depend on Plaquenil for their management.