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NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 09:34
In the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic, several hundred people probably died in the Netherlands due to side effects of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. Medical microbiologist Marc Bonten stated this in de Volkskrant, in response to an international study on the mortality rate due to the drug.
There are no precise figures for the Netherlands, Bonten points out in an explanation NOS Radio 1 News. “In that first wave, about 12,000 to 15,000 people got sick, about 20% died. 10% of them died from the side effects of that drug, so about a few hundred.”
Few alternatives
Especially in the first months the drug was administered to severely ill corona patients. According to the microbiologist, this is mainly due to the fact that there were few alternatives and the situation was serious.
“In the first wave we didn’t have a single drug that had proven effective against the virus,” Bonten says. “With hydroxychloroquine, there was laboratory evidence that it could inhibit the virus. And that’s why it was used widely around the world.”
The international study, led by French researchers, found that a total of nearly 17,000 people died from hydroxychloroquine treatment in the early stages of the pandemic in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
During the first wave of the Corona pandemic, the risk of death with this antimalarial drug was 11% higher than with usual treatment, French researchers say. The results were recently published in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
‘Turning point’
Hydroxychloroquine was originally used to prevent and control malaria. Subsequently, other applications were added, for example against rheumatism. In the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, the drug was also used in seriously ill coronavirus patients. In March 2020, then US President Trump even called hydroxychloroquine in combination with the antibacterial drug azithromycin a potential “turning point”.
Side effects of hydroxychloroquine include cardiac arrhythmias and possibly cardiac arrest. Treatment with the malaria drug was soon called into question. The Dutch Association of General Practitioners, among others, has announced that coronavirus patients do not benefit from hydroxychloroquine. It had no effect on the number of hospital admissions, the risk of death, the severity of symptoms or the speed of recovery.
2024-01-10 08:34:31
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