NCDC confirms 350 new cases of COVID-19, hope rises for Chloroquine

 

…As researchers withdraw study on Hydroxychloroquine

 

BY IGWE OKOSO

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The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said Thursday that 350 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded across the federation.

Also, the NCDC announced that the country lost eight persons to the virus on the same day.

The 350 new cases were reported from 19 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

Lagos State led the pack with 102 cases followed by Ogun State with 34 cases. The FCT recorded 29 cases while Borno registered 26 cases.

The rest are Kaduna (23), Rivers (21), Kwara (16), Ebonyi (17), Katsina (14), Edo (10), Delta (10), Kano (10), Bauchi (10), Bayelsa (9), Imo (8), Plateau (4), Ondo (3), Nasarawa (2), Gombe (1), Oyo (1).

As of June 4, 2020, a total of 11,516 cases have been confirmed, 3,535 cases have been discharged and 323 deaths have been recorded in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory, the NCDC declared.

Meanwhile, the total COVID-19 samples tested stands at 71,336.

In another development, three of the four authors behind a study that raised safety fears over the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, favored by President Donald Trump to treat COVID-19, withdrew their research Thursday, blaming a company that supplied the data.

It was soon followed by the retraction of another coronavirus paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), which was not linked to hydroxychloroquine but used the same healthcare firm’s patient records.

The Lancet study claimed to have retrospectively analyzed some 96,000 patient records, finding that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, common anti-malarials, were ineffective against COVID-19 and even increased the risk of death.

Heart arrhythmia was flagged as a particular concern.

This finding led the World Health Organization to temporarily suspend clinical trials into the medicines.

But the paper soon triggered widespread concern among scientists over a lack of information about the countries and hospitals that contributed data.

Mandeep Mehra, a professor at Harvard University who led the work, along with Frank Ruschitzka of the University Hospital Zurich and Amit Patel of the University of Utah, said in a statement they had tried to launch a third-party peer review.

But Surgisphere, a little-known healthcare analytics firm based in Chicago that provided the data, refused to cooperate.

“Due to this unfortunate development, the authors request that the paper be retracted,” the three said.

“We deeply apologize to you, the editors, and the journal readership for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused.”

The Lancet, a British journal, offered its own statement, saying “there are many outstanding questions about Surgisphere and the data that were allegedly included in this study.”