Article Notes
- Small study size; note the wide confidence interval in absolute difference of percentage COVID infection, ranging from 50% relative decrease to 15% increase in infection rate.
- Self-reporting by subjects.
- Poor-compliance with hydroxychloroquine; around 1 in 5 did not complete course.
More on the Clinical Frailty Score at the NHS' Specialised Clinical Frailty Network.
Relevant from the same research group:
Death, injury and disability from kinetic impact projectiles in crowd-control settings: a systematic review (BMJ Open 2017).
Relevant from the same research group:
Health impacts of chemical irritants used for crowd control: a systematic review of the injuries and deaths caused by tear gas and pepper spray (BMC Public Health 2017).
The WHO changed it's advice regarding the general public wearing face-masks in response to the conclusions of this study.
The WHO now recommends the public wear face-masks when unable to physically distance.
Withdrawn by the authors because of their inability to confirm validity of data from Surgisphere used as the basis for this study:
“Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article.”
Although the findings are broadly consistent with existing low-quality observational and randomised trials, once again there are trial issues that cast uncertainty:
It is unfortunate that, perhaps in their haste, the researchers did not design a more robust trial.
This Cochrane review was updated in 2017: Chooi C, Cox JJ, Lumb RS et al. Techniques for preventing hypotension during spinal anaesthesia for caesarean section.