key: cord-252783-iw3hgkpj
authors: Risch, Harvey A
title: Response to: Comment on “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients That Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis”
date: 2020-07-20
journal: Am J Epidemiol
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwaa156
sha: 
doc_id: 252783
cord_uid: iw3hgkpj

nan

for clarifying various details of one of the studies that I discussed in my review of efficacy and safety of outpatient medication treatment for COVID-19 patients (2) . Dr.

Raoult, the senior investigator of that study (3) , has been carrying out a medically aggressive not all high-risk. In the later published report of the Marseille cohort (4), the cohort is described as "909 inpatients in day-care hospital" and "152 inpatients in conventional units." The term "inpatients" here nominally conflates groups needing to be considered separately; these numbers were not contained in the preprint version (3) of the study that was originally available to me.

Dr. Fleury says that the Marseille screening sample comprised "a general population sampling cohort that includes people as young as teenagers" (1), thus that expected numbers of deaths should be based upon general population COVID-19 mortality information. However, the tested Marseille subjects were all self-referred individuals, many from lower socioeconomic strata or recent immigrants, mostly with disease symptoms or known to have had exposure to people with symptoms, and their 152/1,061=14% "conventional unit" hospitalization suggests that at least this number would have been at high risk. A more exact number is difficult to determine though. 

Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients That Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis

Early outpatient treatment of symptomatic, high-risk Covid-19 patients that should be ramped-up immediately as key to the pandemic crisis

Early treatment of 1061 COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin

Early treatment of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: A retrospective analysis of 1061 cases in

Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: a retrospective analysis