The incidence of COVID-19 is dramatically lower in malarial countries than in non-malarial countries, according to one researcher.

By JAMES DELINGPOLE, 20 Mar 2020

This may well vindicate President Donald Trump’s decision to fast-track the use of the anti-malarial drug chloroquine phosphate for the treatment of coronavirus.

The correlation was spotted by Dr Roy Spencer, meteorologist and a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

***************
Roy W. Spencer
on Wednesday
WOW.

On the subject of using antimalarial drugs for COVID-19 treatment, I've compared COVID-19 cases versus malaria incidence by country....

This is amazing. I downloaded all of the data for 234 countries, incidence of total COVID-19 cases (as of 3/17/2020) versus the incidence of malaria in those countries (various sources, kinda messy matching everything up in Excel).

RESULTS, Multi-country average malaria cases per thousand, COVID-19 cases per million, in three classes of countries based on malaria incidence:

Top 40 Malaria countries: 212 malaria = 0.2 COVID-19;
Next 40 Malaria countries: 7.3 malaria = 10.1 COVID-19
Remaining (81-234) countries: 0.00 malaria = 68.7 COVID-19

Again, the units are Malaria cases per thousand "population at risk", and COVID-19 cases per million total population.

In all my years of data analysis I have never seen such a stark and strong relationship: Countries with malaria basically have no COVID-19 cases (at least not yet).
************
There are various possible explanations for this ‘stunning’ correlation. One is that malarial countries are not keeping effective records and that the incidence of COVID-19 is much higher than they admit; another is that they are located in the tropics – and coronavirus does not survive for so long in hot countries.

But the most encouraging possibility is that these are countries whose populations have been heavily exposed to the cheap, generic, old-fashioned anti-malarial drug chloroquine phosphate – and that this may have given them a degree of immunity.

As I reported earlier, several studies – including a small scale one conducted in France this month – suggest that chloroquine has proved effective in treating COVID-19. It has been previously used successfully in the treatment of SARS another coronavirus with similar characteristics to COVID-19.

Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That? reports:

Additional support for antimalarial drugs for COVID-19 treatment comes from this investigation linked below.

The map says it all: COVID-19 is where Malaria is not.



This is surely good news and offers great hope that the pandemic can be brought under control sooner rather than later.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/...lation-claimed/