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The University of Minnesota enrolled health-care workers and others exposed to the disease in the first randomized prevention study of the drug
Hydroxychloroquine did not prevent healthy people exposed to someone with covid-19 from getting the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a study being published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study is the first randomized clinical trial that tested the antimalarial drug as a preventive measure, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School who conducted the trial. It showed that hydroxychloroquine, which has been touted by President Trump, was no more effective than a placebo — in this case, a vitamin — in protecting people exposed to covid-19.
“As we say in Tennessee, ‘that dog won’t hunt’ — it didn’t work,” said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Schaffner, who was not involved in the trial, praised it as “rigorously done.” Continue reading.