A French doctor finds fame promoting malaria pills for covid-19

IN LATE MARCH, outside a brand-new medical institute on a busy boulevard in Marseille, a single-file queue snaked along the pavement. Amid a national shortage of covid-19 tests, local residents had heard that the city’s Institut Hospitalier Universitaire, linked to the main public hospital, was offering to test anybody with even mild symptoms. Word had also spread that the institute’s director, Didier Raoult, was successfully treating patients there with hydroxychloroquine, used to treat malaria, along with an antibiotic. Today, Mr Raoult says coolly that covid-19 has “almost totally disappeared” from Marseille.