Might/Should this be offered to healthcare workers as a “chronic”/daily regimen while they deal with the covid19 epidemic (analogous to lupus patients who take CQ chronically for anti-inflammatory benefits), or very short term for one high risk exposure to covid19–say a family member suddenly develops the disease, and the rest of the family could be offered high dose short term therapy?
See hypothesis paper of Chang, R.; Sun, W. “Repositioning Chloroquine as Ideal Antiviral Prophylactic against COVID-19 – Time is Now.” [Preprint] https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202003.0279/v1
“Here we reviewed CQ’s antiviral mechanisms, its laboratory efficacy activity against COVID-19, as well as CQ’s pharmacokinetics in its established use against malaria and autoimmune diseases to recommend safe and potentially efficacious dose regimens for protection against COVID-19: a pre-exposure prophylaxis of 250-500mg daily and post-exposure prophylaxis at 8mg/kg/day for 3 days. We recommend further urgent research on CQ for COVID-19 prevention and urge that the above regimens be investigated in parallel with mass deployment by relevant agencies in attempts to contain the pandemic without unnecessary regulatory delays as benefits far outweigh risks or costs.”
