National Consumption of Antimalarial Drugs and COVID-19 Deaths Dynamics : an Ecological Study

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease-2019) is an international public health problem with a high rate of severe clinical cases. Several treatments are currently being tested worldwide. This paper focuses on anti-malarial drugs such as chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. We compare the dynamics of COVID-19 daily deaths in countries using anti-malaria drugs as a treatment from the start of the epidemic versus countries that do not, the day of the 3rd death and the following 10 days. We then use a ARIMA modeling to realize a short-term forecast of deaths dynamics for each group. We show that the first group have a much slower dynamic in daily deaths that the second group. This ecological study is of course only one additional piece of evidence in the debate regarding the efficiency of anti-malaria drugs, and it is also limited as the two groups certainly have other systemic differences in the way they responded to the pandemic, in the way they report death or in their population that better explain differences in dynamics. Nevertheless, the difference in dynamics of daily deaths is so striking that we believe it is useful to present these results as a clue in the researches about the efficiency of hydroxychloroquine. In the end, this data might ultimately be either a piece of evidence in favor or anti-malaria drugs or a stepping stone in understanding further what other ecological aspects place a role in the dynamics of COVID-19 deaths.