A petition launched by the former Minister of Health Philippe Douste-Blazy, asking to soften the possibilities of prescribing chloroquine, this treatment whose use against the coronavirus provokes heated debates, exceeded 200,000 signatures on Sunday evening, while a trio of eminent doctors supported Pr Didier Raoult.
The petition called "#NePerdonsPlusDeTemps", launched on Friday on the Change.org platform, aims to expand hydroxychloroquine treatments for patients with Covid-19, by authorizing their prescription without waiting for them to have an aggravated stage of the disease.
Treatment "before the onset of severe respiratory complications"
In addition, three eminent doctors recommended, in a column published on Sunday evening on the Figaro website, to apply the treatment developed by the highly publicized Professor Didier Raoult, who advocates the use of hydroxychloroquine from the appearance of the first coronavirus symptoms. "The strong point of Pr Raoult's tests is, from our point of view, a very rapid decrease in viral load with negativation of virological research in more than 90% of cases in less than eight days, which could avoid the aggravation and in particular the transfer to intensive care ", pleads this forum.
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It is signed by the former scientific director of the National Cancer Institute Fabien Calvo, the former president of the High Health Authority Jean-Luc Harousseau and the former director general of the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and health products, Dominique Maraninchi. "On this basis, the strategy would rather be to offer early treatment before the occurrence of severe respiratory complications," they continue.
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The Minister of Health Olivier Véran again called on Saturday not to take the steps, in an interview with the online media Brut, and stressed that we would know in the coming days the first intermediate results of clinical studies , which are aimed at determining whether chloroquine but also "other promising drugs" are effective when taken at the onset of the disease.