French Doctor Leads Charge for Treating Coronavirus With Antimalarial Drug

PARIS—Sporting long white hair, a shaggy beard and a skull ring on his right pinkie finger, a French doctor with a history of challenging the medical establishment has become a folk hero here by stoking the controversy over the use of an antimalarial drug to treat Covid-19.

Didier Raoult, a 68-year-old infectious-disease specialist, has emerged as a standard-bearer for those who support the use of the medicine, hydroxycholoroquine, to treat the growing number of people sickened by the new coronavirus, despite a lack of evidence…