Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to take this opportunity to update the House on the latest published medical studies on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID. While the results of the studies are mixed, they can distinguish between early treatment studies—where treatment starts within five to seven days after the first onset of symptoms—and late hospitalised treatment studies. All up, there are 21 early treatment studies published in the medical journals. The majority of them are peer reviewed and, on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID, 21 out of 21 of these studies—100 per cent of them—show a positive effect in terms of reducing hospitalisations and reducing deaths.

If hydroxychloroquine is an ineffective treatment, the probability of getting 21 out of 21 studies all showing positive results are one in two million. Therefore, I call on the National COVID-19 Evidence Taskforce to look at the evidence and come up with a set of recommendations for early treatment that are consistent with the evidence. Of those 21 studies, 100 per cent of them, as I said, all show that the drug hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID to reduce hospitalisations and reduce deaths.