Turkey’s COVID-19 Early Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Strategy Featured by Sky News
Sky News’ story about “Turkey’s COVID Detectives” by special correspondent Alex Crawford is remarkable. It not only covers the track and trace teams in action in Turkey, but also the therapeutic approach, which relies on hydroxychloroquine as a first step to treat symptomatic patients.
The Turkish approach is at odds with most countries, such as the UK, where symptomatic patients are asked to stay home, wait, until the symptoms essentially become unbearable, and then serious complications and hospitalization become very likely.
Such reporting about early treatment is typically absent from mainstream media coverage, so this coverage needs to be celebrated. The pictures are also remarkable.
“As soon as a patient has symptoms, they are treated with hydroxychloroquine tablets and/or favipiravir at home. Follow-up calls quickly spot if the symptoms worsen, and then they will be admitted to hospital.”
“Once at the hospital, Dr Yiyit says the treatment is increased and combined with high-flow oxygen treatment, anti-coagulants, steroids, vitamins and more high-dose favipiravir or hydroxychloroquine…”
“Most of patients recover in five days,” Dr Yiyit insists.”
See below graphs contrasting the US and Turkey – showing how Turkey has contained the spread of the pandemic and achieved much lower fatalities per million inhabitants than the US.
Here is an idea: what about the US and other countries still fighting COVID-19 to adopt the Turkish strategy?
Post Script
Sky News written reporting is pretty remarkable, covering how early outpatient treatment is implemented in Turkey. But what about their TV program? Not a word about it, even if it’s critical in their strategy! Disinformation follows information. Very disappointing.
