Paris (AFP)

Chloroquine can be administered to patients suffering from "severe forms" of the coronavirus, but should not be used for "less severe" forms, the High Public Health Council ruled on Monday, according to the Minister of Health Olivier Véran.

"The High Council recommends not to use this treatment in the absence of a recommendation, with the exception of severe, hospital forms, on a collegial decision of the doctors and under strict supervision", announced the minister Monday evening during a point press on the evolution of the coronavirus in France.

The scientific committee "excludes any prescription in the general population or for forms not severe at this stage, in the absence of any convincing data", he underlined.

A decree framing precisely the use of this treatment, which is controversial, will be taken "in the coming hours", said the Minister.

For its part, the AP-HP, which brings together the 39 hospitals in the Paris region, warned in turn Monday evening against "a disorderly use of multiple molecules without control and especially without the possibility of drawing valid conclusions".

The AP-HPO, she wrote in a press release signed in particular by its managing director Martin Hirsch, "has already engaged in several studies, some using hydroxy-chloroquine and comparing it to other treatments": "for To be useful, these studies must have precise inclusion criteria, corresponding to the different clinical situations which can or must be studied in the case of hospitalized patients, patients followed on an outpatient basis, specific populations ".

Consequently, "she solemnly warns against uncontrolled uses of drugs which would not only lead to delaying the time when it will be possible to decide on their therapeutic efficacy or not (...) but which could also compromise all other studies lines or to launch ".

In France, several elected officials are mounting the pressure to rapidly generalize the use of chloroquine. As for Donald Trump, he has praised its merits on several occasions.

But voices call for caution, emphasizing the need to wait for large clinical trials conducted according to strict scientific orthodoxy to validate or not the treatment.

Many people rushed to Marseille on Monday to be tested by the teams of Professor Didier Raoult who recommend this treatment tested so far on a very limited number of patients (24).

In its opinion, the High Council of Public Health "encourages doctors to include as many patients as possible in the various therapeutic trials underway in our country because it is the surest way to quickly determine whether a treatment is effective or not ", added the minister.

As for the AP-HP, it insists that "the best, see the only way, to have useful answers to the greatest number on the efficacy of drugs, is based on rigorous studies, which can use different interventional methodologies and observational, randomized or non-randomized ".

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