Claim that hydroxychloroquine is an effective early treatment for COVID-19 isn’t supported by evidence from clinical trials
The antimalarial hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was one of the drugs investigated as a potential COVID-19 treatment in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Large clinical trials with thousands of study participants eventually showed it provided no benefit to hospitalized COVID-19 patients. There are no similarly large trials evaluating the effect of early treatment with HCQ, although published results from smaller clinical trials show that HCQ didn’t provide significant benefits for outpatients compared with placebo.