You may have seen claims from people promoting hydroxychloroquine that there are numbers from Italy that prove that it's a prophylactic treatment against COVID-19. These numbers are complete fiction. (1/5
There are at least two mentions in media sources (one from an Italian newspaper, one from an interview in the Israeli press) about the Italian Rheumatology Society monitoring their patients who are taking HCQ for coronavirus cases. (2/5)
These sources say that 65,000 such Italian patients have been monitored and that only 20 of them have been diagnosed positive. *This is false*. I dug into the numbers here, and they did not add up (3/5):
blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archi…
blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archi…
But see the tweet below from a reader of my site. He wrote directly to the Italian Rheumatology Society, and its president quickly replied that the press report is completely wrong. See below (4/5):
There is no evidence as yet that hydroxychloroquine prevents anyone from becoming infected with the coronavirus. Anyone citing the Italian numbers is either deliberately or unknowing spreading false information. (5/5)
