The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday warned against the general use of Ivermectin, an orally-administered anti-parasitic drug, for treatment of COVID-19 patients. This is WHO's second warning against the usage of Ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment in the past two months.
"Safety and efficacy are important when using any drug for a new indication. WHO recommends against the use of Ivermectin for COVID-19 except within clinical trials," Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the global health body's chief scientist, tweeted."
The statement from the WHO top scientist comes a day after the Goa government gave a green signal for the usage of the drug to all citizens above 18 years to reduce the extent of COVID-19 infection.
In March too it had warned that there is 'very low certainty of evidence' of the drug's effect on mortality or hospital admission.
A similar warning by German healthcare and life sciences giant Merck's statement Dr Swaminathan attached to her tweet. Merck said its scientists continue to carefully examine findings of all available and emerging studies of Ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has stressed that Ivermectin at this stage is not viewed as an antiviral drug. It added, "Ivermectin is not approved for COVID-19 treatment."
However, there are some studies that suggest the opposite. A review of available data published in the May-June issue of the American Journal of Therapeutics claims 'Ivermectin' can help end the pandemic.
"We conducted the most comprehensive review of the available data on Ivermectin," Pierre Kory, President and Chief Medical Officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) - a group of medical and scientific experts that led the study said.
The authors have claimed a large and statistically significant reduction in mortality, time to recovery, and viral clearance in COVID-19 patients treated with Ivermectin.
