It all started from an experience of around 20 years of the activity of hydroxychloroquine on viruses. With the COVID-19 epidemic in China and with in vivo tests of the activity of this molecule on COVID-19, Professor Didier Raoult decided to carry out a pragmatic test on patients who are naive to any treatment. These were 24 treatment-naïve patients enrolled and then treated at 600 mg per day for 6 days, which resulted in a dramatic drop in viral load. Then associated with azithromycin which is an antibacterial which has antiviral effects what ensues is surprising elimination of the virus in these patients and a cure.

This has raised a lot of questions from the scientific world. Today history proves him right since the French government authorized the dispensation of chloroquine in the management of COVID-19

Note that Professor Didier Raoult also visited IRESSEF on August 26, 2019, an opportunity for him to establish a collaboration with researchers from this institute led by the prominent Senegalese researcher Professor Souleymane Mboup co-discoverer of HIV-2 , an AIDS virus different from the one previously known.