Conservative media figures, including Fox News presenters Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, have mentioned ivermectin as a drug that could possibly be used to treat Covid-19.
This is part of a recent right-wing media attack on public health officials to promote highly effective coronavirus vaccines as the best way out of the pandemic rather than possible therapeutics to treat the virus. .
Throughout the pandemic, Fox News, talk-radio, and right-wing websites have promoted unproven therapies to treat Covid-19 while questioning the effectiveness of vaccines and masks.
The FDA has warned for months that ivermectin may be unsafe and said it “has received multiple reports from patients who have needed medical attention and have been hospitalized after self-medication with ivermectin for horses.” Although there are human uses for ivermectin, the FDA has not been approved for the treatment or prevention of Covid-19 in humans and the drug is not an antiviral drug.
“Taking a drug for unapproved use can be very dangerous. This also happens with ivermectin,” the FDA said on its website. “There’s a lot of misinformation around and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. That’s wrong.”
A Fox News spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Monday when asked about network hosts promoting ivermectin.
Federal health officials are not the only ones pouring cold water on the idea that the drug can treat Covid-19.
In Mississippi, where only 37 percent of the population is completely vaccinated, health officials said Friday that they had received a growing number of calls about people taking the drug.
“Patients who are not taking any medications intended for the treatment of animals should be informed and should be instructed to take only ivermectin according to their doctor’s prescriptions,” the Department of Health said in an alert. the state of Mississippi. “Animal drugs are highly concentrated in large animals and can be highly toxic to humans.”