From this article:
It’s important to note that HCQ, zinc, and azithromycin are very well understood drugs with clear safety profiles; they are widely available, generic, inexpensive, and can be scaled rapidly, including to the developing world…
Our primary strategic objective must be to prevent ICU overwhelm, which on our current course is imminent in most states. It is an axiom of infectious diseases that treatment in earlier stages is more effective than treating advanced stages. Early COVID-19 treatment is more likely to prevent disease progression to critical status, radically lowering hospitalizations and CFR than inaction.
Current clinical drug trials are mostly focused on treating late stages of disease, when immunologic damage is a dominant threat. We believe that trials should focus on earlier stage infection to prevent progression to advanced disease.
Some health authorities have given the typical caution against early treatment until large, peer-reviewed, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide conclusive data. We fully support the continued effort to investigate existing and novel pharmaceuticals to determine the best intervention through blinded and controlled trials. Weighing the urgency of this unprecedented situation combined with the effects of inaction, plus the relative safety of the drugs, and the preponderance of data showing effective early treatment significantly decreases the percentage of cases that progress to needing hospitalization, we believe that the proposed recommendation is not only adequately founded but ethically obligate[d]…
Early clinical reports suggest it’s best to treat within 5 days of symptom onset. Waiting until a patient is hospitalized or critically ill is unwarranted and unwise.