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Liz Joy, a Republican congressional candidate, said on Friday that two of her family members were using an unproven coronavirus treatment called ivermectin to relieve their COVID-19 symptoms and was recommending on social media that others are considering use the drug.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has not approved or licensed the drug ivermectin for use in people or animals to treat COVID-19. The National Institutes of Health also determined that there was not enough data to recommend ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Clinical trials are underway.
Ivermectin is used in humans to treat certain parasites and is common in veterinary medicine for conditions such as heartworm disease.
The drug has received particular attention on social media and in conservative media as a treatment for COVID-19, making the drug difficult for vets to obtain and leading some Americans to poison themselves with large doses.
A recent study cited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that ivermectin prescriptions were up 24-fold from the pre-pandemic baseline. In addition, this year, the US poison control centers reported three times as many calls for ivermectin exposures in humans.
Joy, who is running to represent the capital region in Congress, said the family member who tested positive for the coronavirus had taken ivermectin – prescribed by a supplier – and was feeling better shortly afterwards after. She said another relative who was living with the coronavirus patient also took the drug for “preventative” reasons. Joy declined to name her relatives or the doctor who prescribed the drug.
Joy is not vaccinated against COVID-19, she said, and has protested against the vaccine and mask warrants. But she said she would take ivermectin with the recommendation of a health care provider.
She claimed that the FDA, CDC and NIH had ignored studies on ivermectin use because “personally I think a lot of it is money. She said providers who wish to prescribe it have been “censored, silenced and humiliated.”
The United States has approved an antiviral drug, remdesivir, for the treatment of COVID-19, and has authorized the emergency use of three antibody therapies that help the immune system fight the virus. All drugs should be administered intravenously or by injection in health facilities. Drugmaker Merck has said it will soon seek approval from health authorities for an antiviral drug it has been studying with promising results.
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