A March 2020 paper that set off months of angry debates about whether hydroxychloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19 has “gross methodological shortcomings” that “do not justify the far-reaching conclusions about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in Covid-19,” according to a review commissioned by the journal that published the original work.

The comments, by Frits Rosendaal, of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, came as part of a review commissioned by International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC), which publishes the journal along with Elsiever. ISAC had issued a statement about the paper in April, saying it “does not meet the [International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy’s] expected standard.”
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The study, Rosendaal writes,

suffers from major methodological shortcomings which make it nearly if not completely uninformative. Hence, the tone of the report, in presenting this as evidence of an effect of hydroxychloroquine and even recommending its use, is not only unfounded, but, given the desperate demand for a treatment for Covid-19, coupled with the potentially serious side-effects of hydroxychloroquine, fully irresponsible.

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