Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

COVID-19 Outpatients – Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc Plus Low Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study

Version 1 : Received: 30 June 2020 / Approved: 3 July 2020 / Online: 3 July 2020 (08:52:22 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Derwand, R.; Scholz, M.; Zelenko, V. COVID-19 Outpatients: Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc plus Low-Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents 2020, 56, 106214, doi:10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106214. Derwand, R.; Scholz, M.; Zelenko, V. COVID-19 Outpatients: Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc plus Low-Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents 2020, 56, 106214, doi:10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106214.

Abstract

Objective: To describe outcomes of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the outpatient setting after early treatment with zinc, low dose hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin (the triple therapy) dependent on risk stratification. Design: Retrospective case series study. Setting: General practice. Participants: 141 COVID-19 patients with laboratory confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in the year 2020. Main Outcome Measures: Risk-stratified treatment decision, rate of hospitalization and all-cause death. Results: Of 335 positively PCR-tested COVID-19 patients, 127 were treated with the triple therapy. 104 of 127 met the defined risk stratification criteria and were included in the analysis. In addition, 37 treated and eligible patients who were confirmed by IgG tests were included in the treatment group (total N=141). 208 of the 335 patients did not meet the risk stratification criteria and were not treated. After 4 days (median, IQR 3-6, available for N=66/141) of onset of symptoms, 141 patients (median age 58 years, IQR 40-67; 73% male) got a prescription for the triple therapy for 5 days. Independent public reference data from 377 confirmed COVID-19 patients of the same community were used as untreated control. 4 of 141 treated patients (2.8%) were hospitalized, which was significantly less (p<0.001) compared with 58 of 377 untreated patients (15.4%) (odds ratio 0.16, 95% CI 0.06-0.5). Therefore, the odds of hospitalization of treated patients were 84% less than in the untreated group. One patient (0.7%) died in the treatment group versus 13 patients (3.5%) in the untreated group (odds ratio 0.2, 95% CI 0.03-1.5; p=0.16). There were no cardiac side effects. Conclusions: Risk stratification-based treatment of COVID-19 outpatients as early as possible after symptom onset with the used triple therapy, including the combination of zinc with low dose hydroxychloroquine, was associated with significantly less hospitalizations and 5 times less all-cause deaths.

Keywords

SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; outpatients; treatment; zinc; hydroxychloroquine; azithromycin

Subject

Medicine and Pharmacology, Pharmacy

Comments (77)

Comment 1
Received: 3 July 2020
Commenter: Linda Irving
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I thank you for your research, efforts, and persistence in this matter to prevent suffering and death due to Covid-19. I have written to my political representatives, to the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec, to some of my local media in an effort to help spread the word about the use of HCQ to no avail. The mainstream media have an agenda that doesn’t include HCQ and, as a result, many thousands of people have died needlessly. It is shameful and more. Thank you again. Perhaps now the media will be forced to speak the truth.
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Comment 2
Received: 4 July 2020
Commenter: (Click to see Publons profile: )
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The main problem with this work is that the demographics of the control group are not reported, so we have no idea if they are similar. This them means that we have no idea if the differences in outcomes are because of the treatment, or if they would be expected because of the demographies of the groups.

A subtler point is that the reported age profile of the treatment group is impossible. Group A is aged >60 years, and almost half of the treatment group was in that group. But the IQR was reported as 40-60, so only 25% of the treatment group had an age >60. I hope this was due to excessive rounding, or a similar error that can be corrected.
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Response 1 to Comment 2
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter: john mecomb
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The control group would have to be people with symptoms at high risk for progression of disease. Would this not be unethical for this kind of study? I for one would not want to be in such a control group and, as a patient, if informed as such would decline.
As a physician, under the current circumstances, it would violate my hippocratic oath to place people in such a control group.
If this was remdesivir, this study would be on the front page of the NYT.
The "control group" has to be a preponderance of the evidence at this point.
It appears from this study, these medicines do no harm in the first several days of the infection.
Let practicing physicians be free to judge not policicophysicians without patients.
Response 2 to Comment 2
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter: Tom Hogan
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: [I am a random internet personality with a BA (chem) and a MA (physics). I was involved in the internet analysis of the withdrawn Lancet article on hydroxychloroquine.]

This article is groundbreaking and important, if not conclusive. I expect it to be published if only to set a starting bar for outpatient studies where hydroxychloroquine / zinc / azithromycin are used to treat covid and for its method of triaging patients for treatment.

It's unfortunate that we know nothing about demographics/comorbidities/disease severity of the control group. The patient numbers aren't large enough to tell us anything about potential mortality reduction for group A. However, the rate of hospitalization looks quite low for group A. This makes this study important for public health policy.

It would also be helpful to break the ages for group A into (<70, 70-79, 80+). The fatality rates go from 3% for 60-69 to 10% for 70-79 to 30% for 80+ in my county and I suspect that there is similar variability everywhere.
Group B seems like a throwaway as it stands. There is no evidence of SOB beyond self-reporting in group B from the reported data. At least pO2 should be reported for Group B for SOB confirmation.
Response 3 to Comment 2
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Mr O'Hara,

thank you very much for your comment! We went back to the respective data matrix to check the IQR for age of the total treatment group (N=141). Indeed, there is a typo in the current version of the manuscript: the IQR is 40-67 and not 40-60. We will revise this and upload a version 2 as soon as possible. Again thank you very much for informing us.

Best regards,

Martin Scholz
Response 4 to Comment 2
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear all,

thank you very much for all your comments. As you have read this retrospective case series study analysed data from COVID-19 outpatients with 100 % confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in a community in New York State, USA. Outcome of patients who were treated with the specific triple therapy zinc, low dose hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin was compared to public reference data of patients in exactly the same community who were not treated with this therapy. However, for our analysis we unfortunately only had access to the outcome data of the untreated patient group (not treated with the triple therapy zinc, low dose HCQ, and azithromycin) and so we were also not able to do a risk adjustment. However, the patients in the treated group were all positively risk-stratified while the risk of the untreated group was probably lower as this group included high- and low-risk patients. Of course, this issue is mentioned (page 3) and discussed (page 15) in the paper.
Again thank you very much for your feedback and support.

Best regards,

Martin Scholz
Response 5 to Comment 2
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter: Dr. Chirag Shah
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: First of all congratulations for this wonderfully written article and sharing this extremely valuable evidence in these pandemic times. My question is about the rationale behind presence of at least 1 comorbidity in Group C? Would there be any data that may indicate positive evidence in symptomatic patients <60 without any co-morbidities? Thank you.
Response 6 to Comment 2
Received: 8 July 2020
Commenter: Nick Divito
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Curious to hear your thoughts on other potentially repurposed existing drugs such as famotidine and ivermectin that have similar retrospective data but are not in the public arena? Also would like to hear your thoughts on the MATH+ protocol that some are using.
Response 7 to Comment 2
Received: 15 July 2020
Commenter: Samuel Mondy
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Moreover to the fact that the demographics are not known for the untreated groups, the major bias in this study that the authors cannot address and deserve the withdraw of this preprint is that the treated group only group young people or old with no symptom. It is not possible according to the experimental procedure and patient selection to the authors to conclude to any effect of HCQ alone or with any conbination.
Response 8 to Comment 2
Received: 26 July 2020
Commenter: Tianchi Zhao
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I have been following the excellent work you and Dr. Zelenko have been doing that can save lives of millions around the world.

I would like to add my observation to support your conclusions.

Countries that use Hydroxychloroquine for early treatment covid-19 all have very low death rate.

These countries include: India, Russia, Turkey and many mid-east countries. Among them, Qatar has 109,036 people test positive, but only 164 total deaths with a fatality rate 0.15% !!! The country's hospitals are empty even though the infection rate is very high for a small country with 2.8 million population.

Brazil started relatively late due to short of Hydroxychloroquine. President Trump sent 2 millions of pills to Brazil on
May 31st upon the request from Brazil's Bolsonaro.
Response 9 to Comment 2
Received: 3 August 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: My biggest question with this study is the reason for using HCQ at all. Chelated zinc is known to be the most effective and readily metabolized form of zinc.

We also know zinc from red meat is more readily absorbed than it is from vegetables.

"Hydroxychloroquine's main function within this treatment approach is to allow zinc to enter the cell. Zinc is the virus killer, and azithromycin prevents secondary bacterial infection in the lungs and reduces the risk of pulmonary complications."

That said, what’s the reasoning for using HCQ at all? Is it even necessary?

Additionally, there’s a big question mark with the “public reference data” used for the control group. How did they verify these patients were “untreated”?

Thank you.
Response 10 to Comment 2
Received: 4 August 2020
Commenter: Cheryl Asmus
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The demographics are reported in the full paper. This is an abstract.
Response 11 to Comment 2
Received: 4 August 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The results here do indeed fall short of what was claimed by Dr Z. repeatedly on social media -- that several hundred patients were treated with the HCQ+zinc+z-pak. It is a major disappointment that the treatment group is now so small. What happened to all the others??? Really raises alarm bells about the veracity of the social media claim. Just go to Zalenko's channel or interviews with him and you will hear him making them repeatedly.
Response 12 to Comment 2
Received: 11 August 2020
Commenter: Nicolo de Groot
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: There are a number of inconsistencies in the paper that I would like to see clarified. First there is the claim of 405 patients treated in early May and now a paper with only 141 patients 2 months later, which really prompt the question what happened to the other patients and why are they not included. Then there are inconsistencies between table 4 and 5. 77% has a fever (109/141), but only 79/141 have a temperature measurement. The IQR is (37-37.8) which suggests that only 30% have a fever. Group A has an age IQR of (64-69), which suggest that there are only 25% (17 patients) 70 or over. Is this correct ?
Response 13 to Comment 2
Received: 6 September 2020
Commenter: David Oliver
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Loved the paper agree with most of the comments for clarification. Perhaps extending the treatment protocol to include multiple zinc ionophores would be more effective. If increased intracellular Zn ion concentration is required to disrupt viral replication, perhaps using multiple zinc ionophores would increase that concentration thus decreasing viral replication further. Other OTC zinc ionophores come to mind; quercetin (QCT) and epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG – green tea extract). Will adding these ionophores to the treatment protocol improve outcomes?
Comment 3
Received: 5 July 2020
Commenter: Brian Hollingworth
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The paper is excellent and, as far as I, a mere engineer, am able to judge, it is well-founded, has been rigorously conducted and is clearly presented. The authors should justifiably take credit for a solid usable study, one that goes quite some way to counter the cynical efforts of a large and powerful body of self-interested persons and organisations who, in my humble opinion, have placed their own gain above the misery and tragedy of thousands of Covid-19 victims. Well done.
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Response 1 to Comment 3
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter: Sbabo David
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: "The paper is excellent and, as far as I, a mere engineer, am able to judge, it is well-founded, has been rigorously conducted and is clearly presented."

I am sorry, but did you check the numbers?
IQR for the 141 patients: 40-60. Then a maximum of 25% of the 141 patients = 35,25 are 61 years old or older.
IQR for group A, 69 patients: 64-69. So a minimum of 75% of the 69 patients = 51,75 are 64 years old or older.

Don't you see the problem?
Response 2 to Comment 3
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Mr Sbabo,

thank you very much for your comment! We went back to the respective data matrix to check the IQR for age of the total treatment group (N=141). Indeed, there is a typo in the current version of the manuscript: the IQR is 40-67 and not 40-60. We will revise this and upload a version 2 as soon as possible. Again thank you very much for informing us.

Best regards,

Martin Scholz
Response 3 to Comment 3
Received: 3 August 2020
Commenter: Brian Hollingworth
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I did in fact spot the typo, a significant one for me as I myself am over 70 years of age. However, since this version has not been peer reviewed I had enough faith in that system to assume this would be corrected. I believe one must consider first and foremost that this is battlefield medicine, an analogy which I believe Dr. Zelenko himself has used. There will be errors here and there, as there always are, but there are lives to be saved here, a great many lives.
Comment 4
Received: 5 July 2020
Commenter: EDIGEZIR B GOMES
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: O presente artigo reforça a síntese de que a HCQ tem ação na redução da replicação viral, Seu uso no tratamento das artrites, a princípio era entendido como potencial amplificador dos efeito anti-inflamatórios dos corticoides no corpo humano. Alguns endocrinologistas, mais recentemente demonstravam conhecimento de que a droga sozinha sem associação com corticoide, agia efetivamente na redução dos efeitos inflamatórios de algumas artrites. E só mais recentemente como a pandemia do Covid-19, é que seu uso como antivirótico foi introduzido. Essa sequencia clínica, fora espelhada pelo Dr. Siddiqui, que tornou fácil o entendimento clinico das fases da doença em curso, levando de imediato a conclusão de que o tratamento das fases iniciais com HCQ, Zinc , Azitromicina e corticoides reduziam drasticamente a evolução da doença para fases mais tardias onde praticamento o sistema imunológico perderia para a tempestade citotóxica. Por outro lado, com a replicação viral reduzida pelo efeito comprovado da HCQ, problemas menores ocorreriam na troca gasosa alveolar, reduzindo a necessidade de entubação e mesmo se assim o fossem, haveria suficiente troca gasosa nos pulmões.
Desta forma quero deixa aqui meus elogios ao Ilustres colegas Scholz, M.; Derwand, R.; Zelenko, V, que tanto lutaram nessa guerra política que pela primeira vez, graças as Mídias Sociais , a Industria Farmacêutica perde sua hegemonia em impor medicações caras , e muitas vezes sem devido seguimento dos efeitos colaterais. Uma coisa nós sabemos, a HCQ tem 0 anos de uso no mundo sem nenhum relato de danos ao usuário necessitado.
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Response 1 to Comment 4
Received: 24 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Thank you for your comment. On behalf of my colleagues I hope that this treatment protocol will save the lives of many patients worldwide. Even those who cannot afford expensive treatmen regimens. "Obrigado por este comentário. Em nome dos meus colegas, espero que este protocolo de tratamento ajude muitas pessoas. Mesmo para aqueles que não podem pagar por terapia cara."
Comment 5
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter: Jay Silverman
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Thank you Dr. Z and the others for publishing this paper that proves that the medicine works.
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Comment 6
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter: Del McReynolds
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dr Zelenko is one of hundreds and probably more like thousands of doctors who use this protocol with their patients and themselves. You doubters and your reasons for not trusting anything that could save the world from people like you wanting to put your trust in a vaccine called "WARP SPEED" is strange. The drug has been safe to use for other issues for the past 65 years which already proves is it safe and is still being used by MILLIONS today. Now it is being used off label for covid 19 with world saving success, so to use something that will probably save your life and inexpensive is a no brainer. It sure won't kill you to at least try it.
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Response 1 to Comment 6
Received: 21 July 2020
Commenter: Herbert von Kalmt
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: You do know that the dose per kilogram bodyweight is different I hope?
Response 2 to Comment 6
Received: 9 August 2020
Commenter: Del McReynolds
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Wouldn’t that be a question to ask the clinical trial experts who used toxic doses to achieve toxic results thus allowing them to claim the treatment was ineffective? This virus has already mutated into at least 30 different strands, how can you create a vaccine for a virus that constantly changes? This protocol interferes with the virus ability to multiply and and saves lives. Like I said it’s a no brainer, lets not over think an inexpensive and safe treatment proven to work.
Response 3 to Comment 6
Received: 6 September 2020
Commenter: John Lake Md
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The mention of “battlefield medicine” seems to be lost on the critics and large watchdogs such as the CDC and FDA. This triple therapy is at minimum a very safe combination treatment with potentially tremendous impact on Covid-19. People are getting sick everyday in the world and options are needed. Studying early treatment is the key and despite its limitations, the results Of this study offer hope for those battling both the disease and the politics. I for one prescribe it and would prescribe it to myself (over 50 years of age) and anyone that I can despite most US State Pharmacy Boards urging against it. Dr Daniel J Wallace made anecdotal remarks about his patient population but he was talking about 1000 patients not a handful. That makes the safety declaration that so many want to criticize more valid than many want to admit. Citing negative outcomes in hospitalized patients that included use of IV Chloroquine has set the US back for months. This study is very encouraging and confirms what those of us on the battlefield are already witnessing.
Comment 7
Received: 6 July 2020
Commenter: Brian K
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I have been closely following Dr. Zelenko and researching this combination protocol since March 2020. Congratulation to Dr. Zelenko et al for the hard work and courage in conducting this study. With politically tainted bias subtracted it is becoming easier to distinguish sincere HCQ studies from tainted HCQ studies that have been creatively constructed to discredit HCQ. Many HCQ studies didn't administer the treatment early, omitted zinc, administered unsafe dosing and/or included patients with comorbidities at a higher rate in the treatment group. This study should open the door for further HCQ and zinc studies, perhaps a HCQ and zinc prophylaxis study.
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Comment 8
Received: 7 July 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I am concerned with a number of biases in the data that seem to stack the deck in favor of the treatment group:

1) The inclusion of 37 cases substantiated by an antibody test is highly problematic, as in order to receive the antibody rest, each of these patients needed to survive covid. Any additional patients that died prior to otherwise receiving an antibody test are excluded. This stacks the deck in favor of the treatment group, and absent any intervention at all, we would still expect them to fare better than the control.

2) Separate from the study itself, I feel compelled to observe that the data described in the report seems to contradict public statements by one of the authors, Dr. Zev Zelenko. The author has publicly claimed to have treated more than 1500 patients with this treatment, but only provides data on 377.

The study states that the control group is based on laboratory results of patients in the same community - how big a population were these drawn from? If these are Dr. Zelenko’s patients, where are the rest of them? Why are we presented with no results from the other patients treated with this cocktail? If these are not Dr. Zelenko’s patients, who are they?

This is an interesting read, but in the public interest, the authors should publish results from the entirety of the patient population treated by Dr. Zelenko.
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Response 1 to Comment 8
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter: Baruch Wilks
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I agree that it would have been nice to have the full data set to look at but this is standard practice in a lot of studies. Unfortunately there is no way to know what the numbers would have been like if they added more data points. That is why reputation is so important and why it is very hard to extrapolate from studies. You can only look at what you are given and make conclusions based on that data set. I also would have liked a bigger patient population with more subsections but they decided to use this one. Since this is really only an introductory study into the use of zinc and hydroxycloroquine and not conclusive enough to say it is a good treatment I feel that it is fine though.
Response 2 to Comment 8
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter: Grant Klappstein
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: "As of today, my team has tested approximately 200 people from this community for Covid-19, and 65 per cent of the results have been positive. If extrapolated to the entire community, that means more than 20,000 people are infected at the present time. Of this group, I estimate that there are 1500 patients who are in the high-risk category (i.e. >60, immunocompromised, comorbidities, etc)."
Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/03/coronavirus-new-york-doctor-successfully-treats-patients-with-drug-cocktail/

So that is a quote from Zelenko's published letter of late March 2020. Depending how you interpret the word "patients" in the context of his sentence it is possible, although unlikely, that the 1500 refers to patients treated but not confirmed for Covid. Or, more likely, that they were potential patients based on the rate of infection in the general population. In either case I am sure you would not argue Zelenko should include untested patients and/or non patients.

If my memory is right, Zelenko started with claims of 5 or 600 treated patients but later revealed that many of the original treated cohort had not been confirmed for Covid infections, they were putative based on symptoms. He then indicated he was going to get some help from researchers to refine the claims according to general research protocols. This paper appears to be the result of that, I expect the 377 was what was left over when "putative+actual" covid infections were trimmed to "actual".

For a summary of covid 19 trials I found the site clinicaltrials.gov which is from the US National Library of Medicine. I did a search of trials using the following terms, "hydroxychloroquine" and "covid-19" considering "active", "recruiting" or "not yet recruiting". This search yielded 189 studies from around the world, and provides, if perhaps not full accounting, at least a valid sample of ongoing research. When I added "zinc" to the search there were 9 results. In one of those 9 the zinc was mentioned only in the title of the trial, in the other 8 zinc was mentioned in the "interventions' column which lists the drugs and dietary supplements. This result suggests that 9 of 189 are testing HCQ plus zinc and the remainder omit zinc.

Of course if the details of these trials were examined one by one, more using zinc might surface, not listed in interventions nor the title. However it probably gives some sort of reasonable estimate of the ratio of zinc+HCQ trials vs HCQ without zinc, ie about 5%. Since many of these trials are in response to the early anecdotal findings that zinc plus HCQ was a valid treatment, worthy of further testing, it is disappointing that so many of the trials do not include zinc. I am not sure what to make of this exactly but I do share a certain uneasiness about motivations as expressed by comment 6, above.
Response 3 to Comment 8
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear anonymous,

Thank you very much for your comments and questions. Please find enclosed our responses:

Question number 1:
This retrospective case series study analyzed data only from COVID-19 outpatients with a laboratory confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in a community in New York State, USA. During the peak of the pandemic the responsible primary care physician diagnosed many patients often first clinically during the early course of the disease and initiated treatment with the described triple therapy zinc, low dose hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin as soon as possible. Most of these patients were already tested for SARS-CoV-2 but did not have a final test result yet. Some others were not able to get a PCR test and the infection was confirmed by IgG tests later. However, in accordance with the study protocol all patients with a positive test result were included in the retrospective analysis at a defined point of time. This included also one deceased patient. The SARS-CoV-2 infection of this patient was also finally confirmed after initiation of treatment and after hospitalization. All patients with a laboratory confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, who were positively risk stratified, and who were treated with the triple therapy were included in the detailed analysis.
For the analysis of the untreated patient group of the public reference (not of the respective practice and not treated with the triple therapy zinc, low dose HCQ, and azithromycin) unfortunately only the outcome data was available and so also a risk adjustment was not possible. However, the patients in the treated group were all positively risk-stratified while the risk of the untreated group was probably lower as this group included high- and low-risk patients. Of course, this issue is mentioned (page 3) and discussed (page 15) in the paper.

Question number 2:
At the point of closing the database 372 positively tested patients of the respective practice were included and 377 positively tested but untreated COVID 19 patients (not treated with te triple therapy, public reference, s. figure 1). Of course, after this time the pandemic has been still ongoing and more patients have been obviously treated but these were not included in this analysis and report anymore.
During the pandemic many jurisdictions in the United States, like states, counties and even cities released data about COVID-19 cases including outcomes (even based on respective zip codes). This was also the case for the respective community. As described in the study approval section on page 9 this analysis was conducted with de-identified patient data, according to the USA Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Safe Harbor and so it is not allowed to report exact dates or more detailed information about the respective community etc. in the publication.

All data available at the time of analysis is included in this publication.
We agree that it would be very interesting to do an additional analysis of more available patient data at a later point of time.

Best regards,

Martin Scholz & Roland Derwand
Response 4 to Comment 8
Received: 9 July 2020
Commenter: samuel gluck
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: this study report would benefit from some easy to read color coded charts, the institutional bias against trump and anything he supports leads to think publication will not be easy. hope i'm wrong. regarding the number of patients treated dr. zz has stated that he did not prescribe the protocol to all the patients he saw only to those over certain age or with other medical conditions etc. that would make them more vulnerable . the way i read it only 377 were treated . this should be clearer.
Comment 9
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter: Jeffrey LeRoux
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: A very

A very interesting study. I would love to see a better designed study. There is not enough details in this prepublication study to reach any other conclusion. I would love to see the details about classification and data about the comparability of the groups. The age difference noted above is a big problem.
More research needed.
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Response 1 to Comment 9
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Mr LeRoux,

Thank you very much for your comments. As explained above there is a typo in version 1 of the manuscript: the IQR of the age of the total treatment group (N = 141) is 40-67 and not 40-60. We currently work on a revised version and will upload it soon.
In this retrospective analysis outcome of patients who were treated with the specific triple therapy zinc, low dose hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin was compared to public reference data of patients in exactly the same community who were not treated with this therapy. For our analysis we unfortunately only had access to the outcome data of the untreated patient group (not treated with the triple therapy zinc, low dose HCQ, and azithromycin) and so we were also not able to do a risk adjustment. However, the patients in the treated group were all positively risk-stratified while the risk of the untreated group was probably lower as this group included high- and low-risk patients. Of course, this issue is mentioned (page 3) and discussed (page 15) in the paper.

To our knowledge this is still the only COVID-19 outpatient risk stratification and treatment study and so we agree that more research is needed. Responsible experts and stakeholders should ensure a common effort to continue to close this gap by designing studies specifically for primary care setting. Based on the observed magnitude of the reported results associated with the use of the triple therapy zinc, low dose HCQ, and azithromycin and based on other available data, we propose to amend ongoing studies with HCQ to include combination with zinc.

Best regards,

Martin Scholz & Roland Derwand
Comment 10
Received: 7 July 2020
Commenter: Roger Burrows
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I am a retired engineer, and I am at a loss as to why the study does not headline every news outlet today. Maybe it plays as old, tired news? My Dad's explanation "It is always about the money. Unless they say it is not about the money, and then it is really all about the money"?
I have questions about the participants in the study. Maybe this is in the depth of the study but not clear to me from the extract.
335 candidates -- COVID-19 patients, not yet hospitalized when the selection for treatment was done.
127 treated with the protocol. How were these selected out of the 335 candidates? Some criteria? Randomly?
104 included in the analysis. Why were 23 treated patients excluded from analysis? That is a lot out of such a small sample size. I think hardly any would be found to have contraindications after the treatment was done. I assume all 23 didn't just die due to unrelated somethings. Maybe they got well and were just not seen on follow-up?

37 patients added to the treatment group with positive serum tests. Were these 37 out of the original 208 unselected candidates? Why were these patients added? It could be humanitarian reasons, I think.
141 treated patients included in the analysis.

Thank you and congratulations of your continued high-value contribution.
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Comment 11
Received: 8 July 2020
Commenter: Dr. Chirag Shah
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: First of all congratulations for this wonderfully written article and sharing this extremely valuable evidence in these pandemic times. My question is about the rationale behind presence of at least 1 comorbidity in Group C? Would there be any data that may indicate positive evidence in symptomatic patients <60 without any co-morbidities? Thank you.
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Comment 12
Received: 9 July 2020
Commenter: Deanna Loftis, RN, BBA
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Authors, Thank you for this tremendous article and thank YOU, Dr. Zelenko for persevering through all the criticism that many people were throwing at you when you first began speaking of your formula. You have been vindicated, and now you can have the last laugh at the FAKE News Media, Fauci Fiasco, the FDA, CDC and the rest of the critics of your amazing life-saving regimen for treating COVID-19. And we don't need a potentially toxic vaccine from Bill Gates if we already have a cure, but I'm sure he has plans to push one onto the public anyway.They don't want to admit a $20.00 script for hydroxychloroquine can cure a disease that they want to make $2 billion off of a vaccine instead! Dr. Zelenko, this is one of the main reasons the pharmaceutical industry has been fighting you and demonizing hydroxychloroquine! It's not only about following the money trail, it is political, because ever since Trump came out and said hydroxy could be a "game changer," CNN, MSNBC, Fauci, Birx, Hahn, the FDC, the NIH and everyone else in the news media has demonized the drug! They don't want Trump to be RIGHT about anything because after all, it might mean he could win re-election in November and these thugs, who are guilty of crimes against humanity, would rather let a few more thousand people DIE of COVID than to cure them with the Zelenko Protocol early in the diagnosis at the outpatient setting! Have you been reading about all the new "spikes" of COVID in the country? There would be no spikes if people were using the Zelenko regimen and there would be no more DEATHS from the disease either! These murderers who KNEW hydroxy worked and deliberately held it back from the public should all be arrested for treason, tried and publicly hung! Because of Cuomo and DiBlasio purposely sending 40,000 COVID infected people back to nursing homes to be right next to the elderly patients who were well, the well patients got the disease and all of them died. Family members even went to the nursing homes and tried to get the nurses to give their loved ones the Zelenko regimen and they REFUSED to let them have it! Attorney General, Barr, needs to indict Cuomo and DiBlasio for MURDER! And now that there is a "spike" in new cases, you can be sure, our bloody, murderous medical system will continue to let people DIE from this disease while claiming they are waiting on a vaccine or a $1000./dose medication to be released to the public! And you can be SURE, when they do come out with a vaccine, it will be UNSAFE and mandatory! They will continue to purposely withhold a life-saving drug from the public. Dr. Zelenko, I saw where some youtube videos you had made with Rudy Guliano were removed from YouTube. They are censoring videos where people might discover your life-saving inexpensive COVID cure! Oh gee, I wonder, oh I wonder who could be behind that? Soros perhaps? Bill Gates? Fauci? The FDA, NIH, CDC? I love to see the day come when all of these lying murderers have to stand before God and explain to HIM why they deliberately let THOUSANDS of people DIE from a disease that HE provided a CURE for!!!

Now, can you PLEASE, PLEASE answer my questions I asked when your article first came out? I wanted to know since Quercetin is also an ionophore like hydroxychloroquine (except it is a natural substance found in capers, onions, apples, grapes & other foods) CAN it be used instead of the hydroxychloroquine for those who cannot take the hydroxy? (I have a niece who, because of tuberous sclerosis complex, cannot take Plaquenil). Also, as you know, in the US, the large pharmaceutical companies, some pharmacies, some insurance companies (like Kaiser) and other physicians still refuse to write scripts or fill scripts for hydroxychloroquine because they are idiots! We can get Quercetin over the counter at most vitamin stores, online and at a lot of the grocery chains. It usually comes in 500 mg capsules. I have been literally begging someone to tell me what the equivalent Quercetin would be for 200 mg of hydroxychloroquine, but no one seems to be able to answer the question, or has not taken the time to do so. Also, how much Quercetin would you give to a 14 year old, a 7 year old or a 4 year old? If your regimen calls for 200 mg of hydroxy 2x a day for 5 days, 220 mg of Zinc once a day x 5 days and 500 mg of Azithromycin once a day for 5 days - then after that - for prophylaxis - you only take ONE of the Hydroxychloroquine and ONE of the 220 mg of zinc ONCE a day one time a week - then would you use the SAME regimen when using Quercetin, just use 200 mg or 500 mg (or 1000 mg) in place of the 200 mg of hydroxychloroquine? Also, another NATURAL ionophore is an ingredient that comes from green tea called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). Could you also use EGCG as a substitute for the hydroxychloroquine IF you are unable to get a script for the Plaquenil from your Dr. or your pharmacist refuses to fill the script from the Dr? This nutrient is also available in capsules from vitamin stores. If, for example, I know Quercetin can be substituted for hydroxy, it does me no good if I don't know the dosage equivalent. Dr. Zelenko, you did tell Rabbi Aryeh Katzin, in a youtube video, that if he was unable to get hydroxy, he could use Quercetin and it would do the same thing, but the rabbi never questioned you any further on it and he changed the subject! I wanted to know the equivalent DOSAGE to use. So, can someone PLEASE reply to this question? Fortunately, we are able to get the Zelenko formula from Dr. Corsi's TeleMed program if a physician there will prescribe it after a consult is done, but it would be nice to know whether we can substitute Quercetin (and/or EGCG) for the hydroxy. and what the corresponding dosage would be for 200 mg of Plaquenil? As a matter of fact, it wouldn't just be nice to know this, it could be LIFESAVING information if we can't get hydroxy! THANK YOU for your time. Dr. Zelenko, I know you are very busy and in much demand as you are consulting with physicians around the world regarding your life-saving regimen. That is awesome, but I have written you at least 4 letters about this issue and all of them have gone unanswered. I asked Dr. Karladine Graves also, but she never answered either. If you are too busy to help me, can't SOMEONE else who authored this article help me by answering these questions? Someone? ANYONE? PLEASE?! Thanks, Deanna Loftis
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Comment 13
Received: 10 July 2020
Commenter: Elsa Schieder, PhD
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dr Zelenko, I am so grateful for all you have done: first, doing the research to see what might help your patients; then putting together 2 treatments to create your protocol; then keeping a record of the outcome; then reaching out in a hundred different ways (interviews, letters including to Pres Trump), and on to this, with 2 world-class experts, to prove to the most science-centered that the protocol worked. Plus you have established a Crowd Protocol.
Congratulations,
And once again, much gratitude,
Elsa
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Comment 14
Received: 11 July 2020
Commenter: Michael Paul
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: This is wonderful news.

1. I would suggest on the first page of the statistical tables that you reiterate the definitions of each strata. It is a little confusing at first glance and this would help readers more easily make sense of the data.

2. Is there a way to mention or footnote that Dr Zelenko has since treated 2200 patients with similar results? (And why were only 141 in the study—was this the point in time when the paper was developed?)

3. I noticed that no patients treated were over 70 years old. (If I read the data correctly. ) People in their 70’s are high risk and those in their 80’s and older are usually the very highest risk of death. Were they excluded for some reason, or is this just coincidental? Your conclusions might be criticized because of this factor.

Best of luck with this most urgent work.

Michael
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Comment 15
Received: 13 July 2020
Commenter: Pierre Hendricks MD
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The criticism of Dr. Zelenko’s original claim was that he treated many patients with HCQ+zinc+zpack who would not be expected to be hospitalized or die of COVID-19. This appears to be a response to that criticism by selecting a group of his patients who might not be expected to do well. Those patients did very well. However my criticism is that the paper left the impression that the untreated group were the stratified patients who did not meet the conditions of >60, SOB, or a comorbidity. They were not. This is a major weakness. How does the author know that these other COVID-19 patients did not receive the same medications or that these controls had a higher percentage of high risk attributes. I am disappointed as I touted the use of HCQ/zinc/Zpack based on this article and my incorrect assumptions of it. It would have been better to have eliminated the “control” group and let his results stand on their own.
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Response 1 to Comment 15
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Hendricks (comment 12): Thank you for your comment. The untreated patients who presented in the practice of Dr. Zelenko were indeed the patient group comprising patients at low risk of severe disease progression (according to the risk stratification approach described in the Method section) and thus were risk-stratified to the non-treatment group. This group differs from the control group from the same community without triple treatment protocol but with comparable risk distribution (according to groups A, B, C) to develop severe disease progression. We hope that we understood your comment correctly.
Martin Scholz and Roland Derwand
Comment 16
Received: 13 July 2020
Commenter: Robert Mankin
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: A very important study.

@M. Scholz: How does your study compare to the recent Boulware NEJM study which found no PEP effect of HCQ regarding Covid onset in persons exposed to a confirmed patient? https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638

Some differences I note: 1) Boulware didn't use zinc; 2) hospitalization was very low in both groups (0.2%), i.e. these were clearly not high-risk patients.

Do you expect HCQ or Zinc + HCQ to prevent symptom onset, or only prevent hospitalization?
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Response 1 to Comment 16
Received: 15 July 2020
Commenter: Prof U.K. Bhadra
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Important and necessary article.

HCQ+Zn prophylaxis can't prevent infection because infection is acquired due to behavior, but the combination does prevent moderate and severe disease.
Response 2 to Comment 16
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Mankin (comment 13): Thank you for your comment. Indeed, the Boulware NEJM study did not combine zinc with HCQ. The risk stratification by Dr. Zelenko enabled more specific selection of patients receiving the triple therapy. The prophylactic effects of HCQ plus zinc have to be evaluated systematically. There is currently some anecdotic evidence about prophylactic benefits. However, we have to wait for more evidence.
Martin Scholz and Roland Derwand
Response 3 to Comment 16
Received: 15 August 2020
Commenter: Rae Dillon
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Mr. Mankin,

I read the Boulware study, which was frankly, a poorly designed and conducted study. None of the participants were examined in person, due to limited testing, a "vast majority of participants" were not tested, the control group was given folate, which is anti-viral, treatment adherence was moderate, (24.6% in the treated group did not finish the 5 day protocol), 10.7% in both the treated group and the placebo group did not complete the 14 day survey. As someone remarked on social media, this self-described "internet-based study" is as good as internet-based surgery.

As you noted, the study did not include zinc. It also did not include azithromycin. Dr. Zelenko says hydroxychloroquine is the gun and zinc is the bullet. A gun won't work without a bullet. Also the 1,400 mg loading dose (800 mg once, followed by 600 mg 6-8 hours later), is extremely high and questions the placebo aspect of the study as most likely the treated group would quickly feel the effects of such a high dose. Dr. Zelenko's protocol calls for 400 mg (200 mg, 2x/day). Also, the maximum recommended dose for hydroxychloroquine is 6.5 mg/kg. So a 1,400 mg loading dose would be for a 215 kg or 474 lb person. Since the terminal elimination half life of hydroxychloroquine is 40 days, cumulative dosage is important.

Oxford's RECOVERY trial, the WHO's SOLIDARITY trial and the REMAP-CAP trial all have an egregious 2,400 mg loading dose. Since all drugs may be poison at high doses, it raises ethical questions as to why are academic physicians and international public health institutions designing and conducting studies that expose hospitalized and in the case of the REMAP-CAP study, critically ill patients, to toxic/overdose levels of hydroxychloroquine when there is ample medical literature establishing far lower and safe therapeutic doses (e.g. Dr. Zelenko et al. and Dr. Didier Raoult's study). While Boulware's dose was not as high, it was still 3.5x higher than Zelenko et al.'s study and 2.3x higher than Raoult's.

Also, Dr. Boulware failed to disclose in the Conflict of Interest form, that he received a grant from Gilead, maker of Remdesivir.


Dr. Marcio Watanabe analyzed Boulware's study and determined hydroxychloroquine did confer benefit. He submitted his paper to the NEJM, but they still have not agreed to publish it.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09477
I doubt NEJM will publish Watanabe's paper given the publishing bias of both the NEJM and The Lancet. https://youtu.be/ZYgiCALEdpE

Best Regards.
Comment 17
Received: 15 July 2020
Commenter: Paul Rivas MD
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The primary mandate is ," First DO NO Harm". At the early onset of covid 19 there are few , if any, alternatives. There is now a fair degree of " smoke" circulating among doctors that HCQ with zinc may offer some real benefits prophylactically. The real question has been, does the drug prolong the qt interval and therefore lead to a serious, and perhaps life-threatening ventricular arrhythmia. Two studies are now showing that the drug appears safe when given early in the course. To me, that's the main takeaway from this study.
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Response 1 to Comment 17
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Rivas (comment 14):
Thank you for your comment. Indeed, this is one of the main takeaways from this study aside from the finding that this treatment can save lives and avoid hospitalization. In addition, please read comment 5 above which relates to the safety of HCQ and the references 62-67, cited in our discussion section, page 16-17.
Martin Scholz and Roland Derwand
Response 2 to Comment 17
Received: 15 September 2020
Commenter: lawrence von Rago, MD
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: re: hcq's qtc risk. When you look at the universe of Rx's with known qtc risk, per my recollection, hcq is among the least risky of 3 categories of risk commonly looking at such issues. That said, combining with zithromax, a drug also with qtc risk, one ought to think of risk. The reality however is that all of these 400+ drugs with qtc risk, very rarely result in death, but this is not the case with covid.
Comment 18
Received: 16 July 2020
Commenter: LS
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: I am totally not charging patients in any way for an in-house cocktail three drug combination and then trying to publish
Comment: I haven’t been able to find where the public reference data for the comparison comes from. If it is public, why isn’t the source provided? How do the authors know what people not seen by Dr Zelenko were treated with?

“In accordance with available public reference data, 712 confirmed SARS-CoV-2 PCR positively tested COVID-19 patients were reported for the respective community”

“Independent public reference data from 377 confirmed COVID-19 patients of the same community were used as untreated control”

And from a comment by Martin Scholz

“For the analysis of the untreated patient group of the public reference (not of the respective practice and not treated with the triple therapy zinc, low dose HCQ, and azithromycin) unfortunately only the outcome data was available and so also a risk adjustment was not possible”

So, on the one hand, only outcome data is available, and on the other hand these people are included because they were not treated with HCQ/AZ/Zn. I don’t think these people can be both these things.
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Response 1 to Comment 18
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear LS (comment 15):
Thank you for your comment. The triple therapy used by Dr. Zelenko was designed based on public scientific evidence for a synergistic effect of zinc and HCQ. All three compounds, zinc, HCQ and azithromycin are safe and known to have antimicrobial effects. The treatment approach described was a logic and necessary approach to save lives in the outpatient setting and to avoid hospitalization and reduce mortality. One could say that it is unethical to not treat early with antiviral regimens, for example with this triple approach in the outpatient setting, and let the patients undergo disease progression, hospitalization, and intensive care. Due to HIPAA and safe harbor regulations, we were not allowed to provide more details about the source of the public data. Prospective controlled studies have to confirm our findings in the near future.
Martin Scholz and Roland Derwand
Response 2 to Comment 18
Received: 29 July 2020
Commenter: LS
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Due to HIPAA and safe harbor regulations, we were not allowed to provide more details about the source of the public data.

If it is public data I struggle to understand what HIPAA and safe harbour regulation problems there could be. Please could you explain. The only way I understand “public data” is this is data available to the public.

I have found data down to the the county level. Dr Zelenko’s practice is based in Monroe, Orange County, NY

https://ocnygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/21de1fb5ce0c480f95dc0cf2b8b83b71
You say in response to another comment below The control group was chosen in a very conservative manner

I note that although the public data shows positive cases in Monroe, Orange County NY there is no information about deaths or hospitalisations. As of 22nd July 2020 OC dashboard states there have been 11,006 positive cases and 489 deaths in Orange County as a whole. The control group is much smaller than the available data for the county. Independent public reference data from 377 confirmed COVID-19 patients of the same community were used as untreated control.

Either the data is public and publicly available, or it isn’t publicly available. Either way, where does it come from?

Also, how was the control group chosen? The preprint doesn’t say. What was the conservative manner?

Prospective controlled studies have to confirm our findings in the near future. ok, but why would it be unethical not to use this treatment if there aren’t controlled studies that confirm your findings?



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Response 3 to Comment 18
Received: 29 July 2020
Commenter: James L
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: "So, on the one hand, only outcome data is available, and on the other hand these people are included because they were not treated with HCQ/AZ/Zn. I don’t think these people can be both these things."

This is the biggest issue with the study. We do NOT know what treatment the "public reference data" group received. For all we know they could have gotten HCT/AZT/Zn as well. Dr. Zelenko was not the only doctor prescribing HCT/AZT/ZN at this time.

All the authors have is outcome data for patients NOT in Dr. Zelenko's clinic.
Response 4 to Comment 18
Received: 10 August 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: James L -

While it is true that patients not in Dr Zelenko's clinic may have gotten HCT/AZT/Zn as well, this is highly unlikely given that this treatment is still demonised and even prevented. It does not stand to reason that the authors would be so unlucky that any significant proportion of the other patients just happened to have received this treatment. Further more, the authors would have to be even more unlucky that the other patients were actually more likely to receive worse outcomes.
Comment 19
Received: 19 July 2020
Commenter: David Maddison
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Here is a new video on mechanisms by which C-19 infects cells. It is hypothesised that a new route to infection also exists. Interestingly, they mention azithromycin as a possible treatment. This is actually part of the Zelenko protocol. While it is an antibiotic it also has the ability to block C-19 from entering cells via the CD147 spike protein. This may explain its efficacy in the protocol, apart from its role in treating secondary infection.

https://youtu.be/MUnTb3_mwTY
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Comment 20
Received: 23 July 2020
Commenter: Thomas Hesselink, MD
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I very much appreciate that you have tabulated the data you have.
Many criticize the lack of controls and the lack of high numbers
of subjects. As people came to you and you selected the more ill
for treatment, and they almost all got markedly improved in 5 days.
That is terrifically valuable data and only needs repetition to certify
stronger statistics. Thank you for demonstrating the concept of zinc
as the real antiviral agent, (the RNA replicase inhibitor) and HCQS
as the ionophore (the transfer agent). The research using HCQS alone
is silly, like serving an empty package. The research using zinc alone
would be weak, as it would take too long to penetrate the infected cells.
The critics are unreasonably devoted to ignoring this important combination.
What I would love to see in future studies is to test RBC zinc levels in a
population of nasal swab positive PCR test subjects and follow them.
I hypothesize that the zinc deficient are the ones that go on to progress
to more severe respiratory distress cases. The zinc sufficient would never
get sick enough to need the Zelenko protocol as their ACE2 bearing cells
are already preloaded with the inhibitor.
I would also like to see studies using other ionophores such as picolinate,
or carnosinate tested clinically, so that we have more options beyond
total dependence on HCQS, which is often in short supply.
doctorhesselink.mysite.com/ResRef.htm
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Comment 21
Received: 23 July 2020
Commenter: David Cotlar, M.D.
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Hello,

Having met Dr. Zelenko as a medical student in Brooklyn 20 years ago, I have been following this story since
it began with the video to the President. As a pediatrician, I do not personally treat patients, but
it has seemed to me since the beginning that none of the studies showing HCQ ineffectiveness
fit his recommended use, i.e. early outpatient use and the vital role of zinc. I was happy to finally
see a controlled study, and although I don't have the statistical evaluative expertise to understand
all the control population comments, it looks pretty good to me. My question is, when and how
does the peer review and journal publication of this appear? What has to happen? If indeed this protocol if effective,
how deeply frustrating and tragic it will be to contemplate the lives that might have been saved
if non-medical factors had not been so influential. And, of course, Dr. Z. is due to undergo cardiac
surgery today or tonight.
Your response to this will be much appreciated.
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Comment 22
Received: 23 July 2020
Commenter: Ralph Harding
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: May I ask what journal you trying to get this article published in? How is that peer review process going? I expect it will be difficult to get this article published.

Thanks for a reply.
Ralph
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Comment 23
Received: 23 July 2020
Commenter: Ken Madden, M.D., Ph.D.
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Unfortunately, the lack of information on the comparison population greatly weakens any statements regarding efficacy of the proposed treatment. There are many potential reasons for differences in hospitalizations and mortality between treated patients and an unmatched retrospective comparison group. The treated patients all evidently presented to a Family Physician office. If other patients in the community were presenting to Emergency Rooms or Urgent Care, one would naturally expect sicker patients and a higher percentage of admissions. Others have pointed out the potential higher ages within the comparison group, which would certainly slant that group toward worse outcomes. Other differences in risk factors between groups could do this as well.

Such criticisms do not diminish the possibility of benefit of the proposed treatment, which this report argues is a relatively safe one. However, it should not be considered substantial evidence of such.
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Response 1 to Comment 23
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Madden:
Thank you for your comment. Of course, the findings have to be confirmed in a prospective controlled study because risk adjustment was not possible. However, even without the inclusion of the control group the findings are of high magnitude. The control group was chosen in a very conservative manner. If one follows the COVID-19 morbidity and mortality figures reported by CDC or other public sites the magnitude of the triple therapy effects approached by Zelenko seem to be much more important for the management of the pandemic.
Martin Scholz and Roland Derwand
Comment 24
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Shah (response 5 to comment 1 and comment 10),
The rationale behind presence of at least 1 comorbidity in group C is base on reference 35 in the paper. “(CDC) CoDCaP. People Who Are at Higher Risk for Severe Illness 2020 [Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.htmlaccessed 2020/05/23 2020]”. Syptomatic patients <60 years without any co-morbidity were not treated in this study according to the risk stratification approach described in the Methods section.
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Comment 25
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Divito (response 6 to comment 1),
All potential repurposed drugs with sufficient evidence to be beneficial in treating COVID-19 patients should be considered. The MATH+ protocol is a strategy for hospitalized patients. The COVID-19 hyperinflammation ought to be limited as soon as possible. This is one of the key messages of our paper: Patients have to be treated early prior to the development of a cytokine storm which is extremely difficult to cure. When patients are admitted to the hospital it might be too late. However, in these cases the MATH+ protocol seems to be a feasible approach.
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Comment 26
Received: 28 July 2020
Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dear Dr. Burrows (comment 9):
Thank you for your comment. The authors would like to refer to Figure 1 which explains the selection and exclusion procedure and our response to comment 7.
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Comment 27
Received: 30 July 2020
Commenter: Charles Dearborn
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Let me just say while you people do your blind study with the proper control group... Yeh, yeh... If I get COVID I'll take Zinc HCQ and antibiotic and exercise my right to try as a patient before I will take anything else. Anyone coming out against this publically should be laughed out of the medical field because you all know it works... And have known since 2005 per the NIH.
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Response 1 to Comment 27
Received: 3 August 2020
Commenter: Scott Foster
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I agree 100%. I'd like to add that HCQ is not the only ionophore that would allow zinc to enter the cell and inhibited replication of the virus. Quercetin is a safe, over the counter alternative that many doctors support use of and that are using themselves. See YouTube video MedCram 59.
Comment 28
Received: 30 July 2020
Commenter: Lee Smith
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The treatment population are patients who presented to their family doctor with mild symptoms. The paper presents this as a strength, as the 'first outpatient study,' which fair enough. It also means that these were almost certainly patients who were less sick than average at presentation. This needs to be clearly reflected in the control group.

There is no control group. There is a comparison group, selected ad hoc after the fact, from some source of data for patients in the same community. We don't know the severity at presentation, or the treatment history, of that comparison group. The paper seems to indicate that neither do the authors. That isn't a controlled study, it's a case series with a seemingly random comparison grafted on after the fact.

We have no idea what the data source for the comparison group is. Literally, none. The authors say it's publicly available community data, but they refuse to name the data source. We have no idea of the characteristics of patients in the control group. None, nada, zilch. All we know is how many there were, how many were hospitalised, and how many died. As one of the comments already points out, we don't even know whether some of the 'controls' might have also gotten the triple therapy.

The authors cite HIPAA to say they can't disclose the data source for the control group. This is confusing. If it's public data, it's public data. Cite the public data source. If it's not public data, that statement is at best misleading. One cannot simply say 'this data came from somewhere, but I can't tell you where,' and expect it to be taken as science.

In the comments, authors respond to this criticism by saying they selected the controls very conservatively. Which means they selected control patients from that undisclosed data source. They don't disclose the selection criteria. We have no idea how they selected the controls from the data source that they also won't disclose. They won't tell us. That's not science.

Given all this, it's entirely possible the 'control group' were patients presenting at the OR with severe disease, who received triple therapy and were hospitalized and died. A reader evaluating your data simply has no way to know.

They make a great deal throughout the paper that treated patients have a much lower death rate than controls. It's one of the major claims of the paper. We have no idea what the control group is, so we don't know if the difference is relevant. But more, that difference is not even statistically significant. The stats show that there is no significant difference in death rates.

Unless I missed something, the authors disclose this in only one sentence, and in one data table, where they show that for mortality, p=0.16, without flagging it as not significant. In fact, they attempt to excuse it, by saying in effect that the lack of significance is caused because they don't know enough about patients in the comparison group. That doesn't save the claim. Rather the opposite, in fact.

It's a case series, not a "case series study." The inclusion of the comparison group in this form is worse than useless, it's actively misleading. If HCQ in any treatment regime actually works, which seems increasingly unlikely based on randomized trials, this paper does a disservice to advancing our knowledge of that fact.
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Response 1 to Comment 28
Received: 31 July 2020
Commenter: Gary B.
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: As someone who has followed Dr. Zelenko and his tx approach for some months, well before his restrospective was released, I can tell you (having also read every one of his hipaa redacted patient records), I had high hopes for this study. I do firmly believe that Dr. Zelenko observed statistically better outcomes in his treated patients than typical CFR data as presented by the CDC and NY hospitals were showing at the time. Of course we're a back to anecdotal evidence. This study is a step in the right direction as it does make an attempt to categorize his patients into subgroups and compare them with a control. That said, Lee Smith makes several very valid points. We need to know much more about the control group to understand and appreciate the significance of the results. I am hoping the study author(s) can clarify and provide a revision that includes this information.
Comment 29
Received: 3 August 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: My biggest question with this study is the reason for using HCQ at all.


Chelated zinc is known to be the most effective and readily metabolized form of zinc. We also know zinc from red meat is more readily absorbed than it is from vegetables.


"Hydroxychloroquine's main function within this treatment approach is to allow zinc to enter the cell. *Zinc is the virus killer*, and azithromycin prevents secondary bacterial infection in the lungs and reduces the risk of pulmonary complications."


That said, again, how is HCQ proven to be more effective at promoting zinc absorption than what we already use? Is it even necessary?


Additionally, there’s a big question mark with the “public reference data” used for the control group. How did they verify these patients were “untreated”?


I *strongly* suggest this study be withdrawn until these key issues and biases are addressed.

Thank you.
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Response 1 to Comment 29
Received: 3 September 2020
Commenter: Blah Blahblah
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Here is research into HCQ and it's role as a Zn2+ ionophore: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/

Zinc being "absorbed" by your definition doesn't mean it makes it inside cells.
Comment 30
Received: 5 August 2020
Commenter: Mark H
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I read through the draft and saw no demographic information on the race of the treated patients vs. the control patients. Since race appears to be a significant risk factor, it might be wise to include that information. If the treated patients came from the Hasidic community where Dr. Zelenko practices, then there may be substantial racial differences between that set of patients and the broader community.
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Comment 31
Received: 6 August 2020
Commenter: Jason W
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Excellent work!
I'm a Computer Scientist, not a Physician, but a medical degree is not needed to discern what makes sense from what doesn't.
Fact: HQC has not provided a double-blind, randomized study.
Fact: Remdisivir can offer a double-blind, randomized study.
But here are some additional facts.
Fact: In the Ford Health System study of the effectiveness of the HQC protocol vis-a-vis Remdesivir, HQC showed better results than Remdesivir
Fact: Remdesivir has some significantly more long term adverse effects than the HQC protocol.
https://www.drugs.com/sfx/remdesivir-side-effects.html
Fact: enough data is now available to unequivocally affirm that the death rate in countries that have been using the HQC protocol is 80% lower than those who have not. And the number of studies now available on the use of HQC is large and overwhelmingly supportive of Dr. Zelenko's claims.
A compilation of them is available at
https://c19study.com/ It is imperative that the FDA rescind all restrictions on the prescription and dispensation of HQC and allow it to be used at the discretion of physicians and patients.
We must take politics and financial gain out of a decision-making process that can save tens of thousands of lives in the coming months.
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Comment 32
Received: 10 August 2020
Commenter: David Hamilton
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The control group is a consecutive series of covid-19 patients, of all levels of severity.

The study patients should also be a consecutive series encountered by him, but it is not. During this study, Dr Zelenko doubtless had consultations with some patients reporting such urgent symptoms that he sent them directly to hospital for in-patient treatment, notably oxygen in some form. By excluding these severe cases, he has selected milder cases for treatment. Dr Zelenko's records are good, and he should give the number of sick patients he sent for immediate hospital care during the study period. If any of his patients went directly to hospital emergency departments on their own initiative, he would see them on discharge and/or get a summary letter from the hospital. Their number should also be given.
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Comment 33
Received: 12 August 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Was strain typing performed? Could that be the reason behind the both the severity of disease and response to treatment? This in turn begs another question - could the severity of the disease confounded the patients' outcome in the study as Group A has both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients?
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Comment 34
Received: 16 August 2020
Commenter: Kevin Lee
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I am not in the public health. However, I have followed closely public the discussions by Dr. Zelenko in recent months. I have also followed the positive case and death counts on websites of my local counties. I presume one needs to make a request to the public health agencies of local counties through proper channel to examine the records. On Aug 11, I heard Dr. Zelenko say that his data is available for examination by anyone via legal means.

That said, I want to address this question on the demand for the gold standard RCT. First, I want to state that no experiments in physical sciences that I know of does any randomization for canceling of confounding factors or biases. In health sciences involving patients, to my knowledge the randomization is an efficient way for cancellation of biases and confounding factors. However, it is not clear to me that a placebo RCT can be performed on every segment of covid-19 patients and stages of illness. I cannot think that high risk patients can be given apart from the best of cares in light of available treatments.

Absent of an RCT study on high risk patients at the early stage of illness, here, I want emphasize that the paper's results of N=141 high risk patients is not insignificant. I am speaking not as a statistician. For background, I looked at the binomial distributions for mean frequency p=0.99 for cases N=10, 100 and 1,000. At 100, the peak is from 98 to 100. In other words, if one saw 99 patients of 100 survived, then when repeated the likely outcomes can be 98 to 100. The distribution allows for even lower numbers to 95 with very low probabilities. If patient count were 1,000, the distribution peak gets sharper and the results are even more solid. If non-randomized results are statistically solid, then any randomization in sampling (i.e. RCT) will not change outcomes.

Granted that there can be confounding factors, we can look at what the possibilities are. Out of the 35,000 population in the community of one square mile [per Dr. Zelenko], assume the positive cases in the duration from Mar to May were of 10%, that is 3,500.

all patients 335+37(10.6%) out of 3,500
high risk 104+37(37.9%) out of 335+37

If we assume 40% to be the community wide number out of the 3,500, then there were 1,400 high risk patients. So, the number of high risk patients in the community is in the ball park of 1,500.

It is remarkable that Dr. Zelenko's clinic saw ~10% of the high risk patients in that time period early in the pandemic. Apart from the paper, Dr. Zelenko has frequently mentioned publicly of his team having seen ~2,200 covid-19 patients. And, the paper presents only 4(2.8%) out of 104+37 high risk patients got hospitalized compared to 58(15.4%) out of 377 in the community from public reference data. From this, the hospitalization rate is bracketed between 2.8% and 15.4%. Suppose, we form a binomial distribution for N=1,500 with mean frequency p=0.154 for hospitalization. At the 1,500, the peak is practically zero at below p=0.13 with the sum from p=0 to 0.13 giving only probability of 0.004. There is not much probability for below p=0.13 that is around p=0.028 and is almost zero from p=0 to 0.06, that is 1.4E-29 or 1.4x10^-29.

Having done this analysis, it appears to me that if the community hospitalization rate were 0.154 among high risk patients, the probability is zero for a local clinic to be seeing a rate of only 0.028 unless an external influence is present.
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Response 1 to Comment 34
Received: 20 August 2020
Commenter: Kevin Lee
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: With further thoughts, the correct comparison in my previous posting towards the end should be to look at the N=141 as a subgroup to the N=1,500 community group. The correct analysis is to form the binomial distrubtion for N=141 subgroup with mean frequency p=0.154. This has a peak range from p=0.07 to 0.25. Then, we form a second distribution in order to see the range when it is centered at mean frequency p=0.028. It is from p=0 to 0.06. And, we sum values of the former distribution from p=0 to 0.06, to get an almost zero value, 9.1x10^-4. Statistically, this is the probability for to see the low hospitalization rate at Dr. Zelenko's clinic in my assumed scenario of mean community hospitalization rate of p=0.154 among high risk patients. It is different from the previous analysis but still is a small number.
Comment 35
Received: 16 August 2020
Commenter: Peter Ross, PhD, MD
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Transmission Rate Studies And Not Vaccine Experiments Are the National Priority

About the mechanism and efficiency of contagious transmission, there seems to be a need for direct transmissions studies, since the current data is too thin to continue to justify many of the burdensome and often counterproductive public health interventions.

A direct transmission study is, for example, two or more young (age 21 to 30) healthy volunteers sharing a confined air space for 15 minutes to 6 hours time, one of the volunteers being PCR positive, but absent signs and symptoms, e.g. asymptomatic. Study design should probably include pre- and post- exposure quarantine and monitoring throughout, such as blood work and imaging, screening for alphacoronaviurs IgG, etc.

In parallel designs, protective equipment studies and pre- and post- exposure prophylaxis regimens can be incorporated, as well as the 'head-to-head' comparison of PCR and serology labs from different venues and the rapid saliva diagnostics now entering the market. Somebody also needs to do PCR testing on N95 masks from asymptomatic and symptomatic volunteers, as well as virus cultures thereof.

Taken together, the logistics of direct transmission studies are simple enough to be completed within a time frame of two months with a minimum n=250,000 as an international effort.

In the bio-medical-social ethical analysis, given the extremely low prevalence of COVID illnesses among the under 30 yr. age group, such transmission studies are both long-overdue and bear a safety margin far superior to any vaccine experiments.

From a national security prospective, investigating transmission and establishing rapid point-of-care and home testing takes precedence - by far - compared to yet ADDITIONAL attempts to manufacture inoculations for protection from coronaviruses.

In the absence of standardized protocols demonstrated to safely measure transmission rate by both pulmonary and oral routes with circulating strains, the testing of experimental vaccines MUST be put in abeyance.

Fortunately, the straightforward logistics of controlled transmission rate studies allows for amassing definitive data well before vaccine testing is scheduled to begin. Protocols for transmission rate study must be readily available for any following phase of vaccine experiments to fulfill the ethical, the scientific, and the national security optimal requirements.

Furthermore, safe and well-established transmission study protocols for circulating strains can and must PRECEDE vaccine experiments, which do not provide any relevant transmission data within bio-medical-social relevant time frames, and only serve to introduce additional and wild parameters while exponentially magnifying both the time frame and costs, not to mention inhibiting the recruitment of volunteers.

Of course, at first glance, the ethics of direct transmission studies may appear problematic, given some of the diabolically wild 'medical' precedents throughout history.

Today, the advent of sophisticated laboratory methods together with rapid communications combined with international transparency enables a paradigm shift for investigative epidemiology and vaccine testing.

In conclusion, both direct transmission studies and development of rapid tests are a national security imperative and both take precedence over the vaccine arm of R&D, with neither precluding but rather informing the other.

Peter Ross, PhD, MD
16 August 2020
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Comment 36
Received: 19 August 2020
Commenter: Mr. Sabjo Rene’
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: This is an excellent article and I am very happy to see more and more studies underway to explore hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin combo therapy for treating people with COVID-19. What baffles me is how much money and effort is being poured into fast-tracking novel, untested, and possibly expensive vaccines and how very little comparative effort and resources are being allocated to studies of this inexpensive and readily accessible alternative to vaccines. It appears that proponents of hydroxychloroquine are in an uphill battle to garner support for the use of this medication for COVID-19. A course of treatment for Remdesivir is $3500. The combo therapy of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin run less than $100. The bigger question to investigate would be “who has an investment in a vaccine solution (or expensive prescription antiviral medication) versus who stands to benefit from the hydroxychloroquine/zinc option.” Another question that might be raised is, why is there such tremendous resistance to the use of hydroxychloroquine? When faced with a life-threatening illness, who in their right mind would not employ what has been a safe, accessible, and inexpensive course of treatment for many decades?
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Comment 37
Received: 21 August 2020
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I find it very disturbing that Zalenko repeatedly stated on his channel and in interviews that he treated hundreds well over 1000 patients for COVID, and that now all he can produce is a study that contains 104+37 patients. I no longer feel I can trust him. If the hundred of patients not included here never took a test to prove that they had the covid, then he should never have said he treated hundreds of patients who had covid! That is extraordinarily unethical. The president was making decisions based on feedback from doctors on the front line and him in particular. I feel he misled the president and the nation, and ppl like me who have been defending him at great cost to our reputation. Shame on him!
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Response 1 to Comment 37
Received: 6 September 2020
Commenter: Vladimir Zelenko
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Thank you for your comment. Let me clarify. My team saw 2200 Covid-19 patients from March to June. Out of those patients 800 were stratified has high risk and were treatment with my protocol. The 1400 low risk patients were treated with supportive care and they all recovered. Please understand that medical treatment doesn't always mean giving medication. Most of the time it is important to know when not to intervene and do no harm.

Out of the 800 high risk patients only those that a positive PCR or IgG tests for Covid-19 were included in the study. The reason being that the medical community would not accept clinical diagnosis as valid proof of infection. That is how we arrived to the data set that was published. I hope that clarifies things for you.
Comment 38
Received: 2 September 2020
Commenter: Michael F.
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: A huge congratulations and many thanks for sharing this information!

So, reading between the lines, we basically have highly effective prophylaxis treatment for COVID-19 comprised of just 3 OTC supplements:

1. Elemental Zinc.
2. Quercetin OR Epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG) from Green Tea.
3. Vitamin C.

All available in the local chemist without prescription and all perfectly safe and good for the health supplements regardless of COVID-19!

I'm sure his excellency Dr. Zelenko would agree that the best way to reduce the pandemic as quickly and as safely as possible would be for as many adults as possible to take the above supplement combination for a period of time.

Once again, enormous gratitude!
MF
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Response 1 to Comment 38
Received: 23 September 2020
Commenter: Pan dora
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Well done to dr zev and his colleagues.
An excellent paper and I have believed in the potential of hydroxychloroquine and zinc since March 2020. Hearing dr zev speak about it was encouraging.

I would agree that quercetin has the same potential as hydroxychloroquine to act as ionophore to facilitate the zinc doing its job as antiviral, without potential side effects and available OTC

Why oh why are not all doctors /governments not recommending zinc, quercetin, vit D , (and arithromycin where bacterial infection is involved)???
What can be done to make this happen?

The cynical side of me says it is because of big pharma and patents and vaccines, but that could never be true, as everyone involved in health care has taken an oath to look after our patients and that their wellbeing comes first before the cost of any drug or profits to be made.
Comment 39
Received: 4 September 2020
Commenter: Simon Hodges
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: ou should also consider adding Folic Acid to this protocol for the following reasons.

There is evidence in the infamous Boulware Postexposure HCQ Prophylaxis RCT that both HCQ and Folic Acid reduced the hospitalisation rates in either arm of their study by over 80%. The possibility of HCQ ameliorating the severity of the disease was one of the twin aims of the original study protocol. In a shameful political move Boulware dropped this consideration from their final paper.

The Boulware study was fatally flawed in that they gave Folic Acid to the control group as the placebo. This was not mentioned in the original study protocol and it is suspicious that a few days after the protocol was published another study was published describing the bio-chemistry as to how folic acid was a likely prophylactic against Covid-19 in its own right as it blocked the virus from binding at the furin cleavage site. It is possible that Boulware chose folic acid as the placebo after reading this.

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/itempdf74155353254prod/12034980/The_Role_of_Folic_Acid_in_the_Management_of_Respiratory_Disease_Caused_by_COVID-19_v1.pdf

In the Boulware study protocol they predicted that 10% of patients in the control group would require hospitalisation. By way of their results: 58 of 407 subjects receiving folic acid as a post-exposure 'placebo' were classed as confirmed cases, yet instead of 5 or 6 patients requiring hospitalisation there was only one patient admitted: suggesting that even when administered after infection and at the very height of the pandemic in the US, the Boulware study actually confirmed that folic acid also reduced the severity of the illness in that hospital admissions declined by 82% from the protocols expectations. There is no better indicator of the severity of cases than the hospitalisation rate.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638?query=featured_home
Given that these agents act in different ways; it is likely that HCQ and folic acid used in combination could have reduced hospitalisations by almost 100%. Especially when one considers that in the UK, of all pregnant women admitted to hospital with Covid-19, 81% were in the third trimester of their pregnancy and nearly all were in the late second and third trimesters. All pregnant women in the UK are directed to take folic acid daily throughout the first 12 weeks of their pregnancy.

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2107
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Comment 40
Received: 6 September 2020
Commenter: Vladimir Zelenko
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Thank you for all your comments. I am a family physician and not a researcher. I was not doing research, rather I was trying to keep my patients alive and out of the hospital. In early March, there was NO out-patient treatment recommended or even suggested. I was the FIRST in this country (perhaps even the world) to suggest and implement successful out-patient treatment of high risk patients. To suggest that the control group may of also received treatment is intellectually dishonest. At that time I was attacked from every direction and had no support from anyone. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that I was the ONLY one treating patients in this manner.

Regarding selection bias of the control group: there was absolutely a bias but it was against me. I only treated high risk and patients (most of which were over the age 60) whereas the control group had both low and high risk patients. It is reasonable to assume that the average age of the control group was lower than the patients that I treated.
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Response 1 to Comment 40
Received: 23 September 2020
Commenter: Miryam Rae
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Dr Zev, I have followed what you have been doing, since March, when I was enthralled to hear you believed in something I had been hypothesising on: hydroxy chloroquine as a zinc ionosphere: and you were successfully using it in your community.

You have been up against obstacles and challenges, and your heartfelt aim was always to do good in your community.

This paper needs maybe to include some of your, and your colleagues, explanations, and be offered for peer review where possible, and get more publicity.

A challenge has been that many patients treated in the community did not receive covid tests, and although they had all the symptoms of covid, they would not necessarily appear as a statistic, unless their situation worsened and they were admitted to hospital and tested.

I know other community mds who have been treating "obvious" cases, who will, thank g~d, not be counted as covid cases because they were never sick enough for hospital, and never tested: they got better, thanks largely to hydroxychloroquine or quercetin and zinc and even vit C infusions etc.
Comment 41
Received: 14 September 2020
Commenter: Paulo Buchsbaum
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: I really liked the article and its methodology, within the expected limitations due to only indirect access to patients in the control group.

I have a question not entirely related to the article, but I think that it's worth an answer from one the authors.

How do you think the use of Ivermectin compares with the use of Hydroxychloroquine, in the sense that it is even rarer that there are side effects with the use of Ivermectin?

With Ivermectin, it is possible that even patients with less risk could take it with litlle risk.

Would it make sense to add zinc to those prescribed to use Ivermectin with Azithromycin or Doxicillin?
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