Covid Analysis, August 5, 2020 (updated October 10, 2020)
Many countries either adopted or declined early treatment with HCQ, effectively forming a large trial with 1.8 billion people in the treatment group and 663 million in the control group. As of October 10, 2020, an average of 87.0 per million in the treatment group have died, and 494.5 per million in the control group, relative risk 0.176. After adjustments, treatment and control deaths become 182.0 per million and 746.7 per million, relative risk 0.24. The probability of an equal or lower relative risk occurring from random group assignments is 0.023. Accounting for predicted changes in spread, we estimate a relative risk of 0.28. The treatment group has a 72.3% lower death rate. Confounding factors affect this estimate. We examined diabetes, obesity, hypertension, life expectancy, population density, urbanization, BCG vaccine use, testing level, and intervention level, which do not account for the effect observed.
