Don’t use ivermectin to treat COVID, Coast health officials warn after one hospitalized
Mississippi Coast health officials and federal agencies are warning residents about a horse de-worming medication being used as an at-home treatment for COVID-19.
At a Gulf Coast Business Council meeting on Thursday, Singing River Hospital CEO Lee Bond said one patient had been recently hospitalized after injecting ivermectin.
The medicine is an anti-parasitic medicine commonly used in horses and cows, and has recently been flying off shelves at farm supply stores across the United States.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there’s a “growing interest” in humans using the drug to treat COVID-19. It has not been approved the FDA.
“Ivermectin is often used in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals. The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses,” the FDA says on its website.
While ivermectin can be used to treat things like lice and skin conditions, the FDA says the human and animal medicines are very different.
“Animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which can weigh a lot more than we do — a ton or more,” the FDA says. “Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans.”
The National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization have also advised against using ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19 outside of controlled clinical trials.
Bond, along with the state’s health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, have discouraged the use of ivermectin as a treatment to COVID in Mississippi.
Dobbs often promotes monoclonal antibody treatments for most COVID-positive patients in Mississippi. They are available at multiple locations on the Coast.
