Hydroxychloroquine / azithromycin in COVID-19: The association between time to treatment and case fatality rate

BACKGROUND: Currently, there is no formally accepted pharmacological treatment for COVID-19. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We included COVID-19 outpatients of a Peruvian primary care center from Lima, Peru, who were treated between April 30 - September 30, 2020, with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Logistic regression was applied to determine factors associated with case-fatality rate. RESULTS: A total of 1265 COVID-19 patients with an average age of 44.5 years were studied. Women represented 50.1% of patients, with an overall 5.9 symptom days, SpO2 97%, temperature of 37.3 °C, 41% with at least one comorbidity and 96.1% one symptom or sign. No patient treated within the first 72 h of illness died. The factors associated with higher case fatality rate were age (OR = 1.06; 95% CI 1.01–1.11, p = 0.021), SpO2 (OR = 0.87; 95% CI 0.79–0.96, p = 0.005) and treatment onset (OR = 1.16; 95% CI 1.06–1.27, p = 0.002), being the latter the only associated in the multivariate analysis (OR = 1.18; 95% CI 1.05–1.32, p = 0.005). 0.6% of our patients died. CONCLUSIONS: The case fatality rate in COVID-19 outpatients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin was associated with the number of days of illness on which treatment was started.