These malaria drugs work by stopping the ability of malaria to reproduce in the body. When you go to an area where malaria is prevalent you start to take these drugs before you even get boots.down. we started a week before my unit went to Panama and keep taking them for a week after we returned in addition to the whole time we were there. They do not prevent malaria from entering your body via mosquitoes they allow your body time to kill it before it multiplies so much it’s out of control.
The effect on coronavirus is expected to be the same it works by removing or severely limiting the virus ability to replicate giving the body time to kill it while it is still small in numbers.
What they won’t say even if true is that if the mechanism is the same as malaria then they drugs would not only reverse a already infected case they would allow for the preventive use to stop the inital infection if taken prior to exposure and continuous while exposed just like their certified use in malaria hotzones. The pills keep you from actively presenting symptoms of malaria while you take them no matter how many infected mosquitoes bite you. That’s why you keep taking them after exposure for really two weeks to make sure you body killed all the stragglers.
They won’t say they found a preventive became there is no way to meet demand for 330 million people all at once. The military would be immediately put on them though to protect combat readiness.
Not just the military, but if it proves effective, you’ll see the doctors, nurses and paramedics taking hydrochloroquine regularly. Hospital staff can’t afford to self-quarantine for 14 days every time they are exposed.