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Jim Santilli: "It was really a turning point."
A 38-year-old Macomb County man with COVID-19 says a drug typically used to treat malaria showed positive results for him in the hospital and quickly turned things around, Fox 2 reports.
"I felt like I was slowly drowning," said Jim Santilli, who had been at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital in Clinton Township. "I remember just sitting there thinking, 'I'm not going to make it until midnight.'"
He tells Randy Wimbley that the hospital told him about a week ago that it had exhausted treatment options and an infectious disease doctor recommended trying hydroxychloroquine, a malaria remedy, and zithromycin, an antibiotic.
"Right away I had a huge improvement in a few hours," he tells Fox. "The gasping for air stopped. A lot of my symptoms went away. And pretty much it was really a turning point, almost a 180-degree turn as to what I was experiencing."
Santilli has been released from the hospital, but remains in isolation at home with a cough.
Some suggest tempering enthusiasm for the drug, recently approved by the FDA for experimental treatment of the lung virus. "It does appear as though the hydroxychloroquine may be beneficial," says DMC Chief Medical Officer Rudolph P. Valentini.
"It's not a classic anti-viral medication. One has to be a little bit suspect before we attribute too much benefit from a medication that's really not designed to treat viral infections. So I wouldn't get too encouraged by it. At the same time, I think we all need hope and we need to have options, this seems to be a safe option."
The State Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs issues a statement to the station:
"Prescribers and dispensers have the responsibility to apply the best standards of care and use their clinical judgment when prescribing and dispensing these and any other drugs to treat patients with legitimate medical conditions."
