Australian doctors banned from prescribing ivermectin for COVID

The battle for choice in healthcare continues in Australia, where last week, the government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) banned doctors from prescribing ivermectin for “off-label” uses – such as treating COVID.The Guardian reports that the decision was made after prescriptions for the drug (officially an anti-parasite medication) increased “between three and four times in Australia in recent months.” The TGA also noted that attempts to import ivermectin from abroad went up tenfold in August.Doctors will now only be able to prescribe ivermectin for scabies and certain other parasitic infestations.

“These changes have been introduced because of concerns with the prescribing of oral ivermectin for the claimed prevention or treatment of COVID-19,” the TGA said in a statement, adding that, “Ivermectin is not approved for use in COVID-19 in Australia or in other developed countries, and its use by the general public for COVID-19 is currently strongly discouraged by the National COVID Clinical Evidence Taskforce, the World Health Organization, and the US Food and Drug Administration.“The doses of ivermectin that are being advocated for use in unreliable social media posts and other sources for COVID-19 are significantly higher than those approved and found safe for scabies or parasite treatment,” it added, warning of possible “serious adverse effects, including severe nausea, vomiting, dizziness, neurological effects such as dizziness, seizures and coma,” from high doses of the drug.According to both the TGA and Australia’s National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, “There remains significant uncertainty whether ivermectin is more effective and safer than standard care in treating patients with COVID-19.”The TGA added that its decision to restrict ivermectin was also due to concern that people would rely on the option of using the drug to treat COVID-19 as an alternative to getting vaccinated.In an issue brief for patients, policymakers, and physicians, America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) called the repeated and intentional effort to limit the use of preventative and prophylactic medications to help reduce the impact of the virus "one of the greatest tragedies as well as most significant errors made by the government in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic."They continued: "Uneven COVID-19 vaccine distribution and administration, and justifiable vaccine skepticism due to its unprecedented speed, provides additional impetus for employing safe repurposed anti-infective therapies that have been time-tested and are widely available. One such therapy is the antiparasitic drug Ivermectin, a member of the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines."America’s Frontline Doctors has been recommending Ivermectin as a safe and effective COVID-19 therapy for many months. We do not suggest that Ivermectin is a cure for COVID-19 or can absolutely prevent an individual from contracting the virus. However, in study after study, Ivermectin has been associated with improved health outcomes in both COVID-symptomatic patients and those using the drug as a preventive therapy."Many studies have consistently attested to the viability of Ivermectin’s use in treating COVID-infected patients. There is parallel evidence to also recommend the drug’s use as a preventative.For example, Dr. Pierre Kory, in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on December 8, 2020, pointed to positive findings of an October 2020 clinical study in Argentina which tested the effectiveness of Ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. The randomized clinical trial (RCT) found that Ivermectin inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Eight-hundred healthcare workers were administered Ivermectin as a preventative medication and none contracted SARS-CoV-2. Among the additional 400 healthcare workers that were not treated with Ivermectin, 237 individuals, or 58% of the group, were infected with the virus.“These are statistically significant, large magnitude results if you take ivermectin. It is proving to be a wonder drug and it is critical for its use in this disease,” Dr. Kory said of the study. Moreover, in the 19 randomized control trials published to date, Ivermectin use resulted in positive effects, including decreased time of virus shedding, length of hospital stays, as well as lower mortality. Among all 37 published studies using Ivermectin either as early treatment or prophylaxis, 100% reported positive results, with prophylaxis showing 90% improvement in the experimental groups.“Prophylaxis” refers to taking a regular regimen of medication before becoming ill. Even in a recent limited study published in The Lancet, researchers found “a reduction in the self-reported anosmia/hyposmia and a (non-statistically significant) tendency to lower viral loads and lower IgG titers which presumably reflect milder disease,” and “the positive signal found in this pilot together with emerging evidence from animal models and other clinical trials warrants the conduction of larger trials using ivermectin for the early treatment of COVID-19.”