A medical officer speaks to a patient at a walk-in and drive-thru coronavirus testing facility in Pretoria.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg
South African authorities approved the use of a drug used to control parasites in humans and livestock to treat coronavirus patients.
The drug, known as ivermectin, will be allowed for compassionate use in a controlled access program, the head of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority said Wednesday. Doctors who register with the regulator to use the drug will be considered on a case-by-case basis, Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela said.
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Ivermectin has been used for decades to treat livestock infected with parasitic worms, while in humans it is used as a topical ointment for diseases such as skin infections and inflammation. The World Health Organization has suggested that the drug has encouraging effects on the coronavirus, but like other regulators, the drug is also said to have not been properly evaluated.
The drug will not be limited to patients with known co-morbidities of Covid-19, Semete-Makokotlela said.
The regulator already sees widespread use of ivermectin in an emerging black market as South Africa grapples with a second wave of coronavirus infections resulting in the hospital the number of admissions is increasing and there is a shortage intensive care beds. By allowing controlled use of the drug, the regulator can monitor its use and the body can collect much-needed safety data.
‘Despair’
“We absolutely share everyone’s despair at this point,” said Helen Rees, the chair of the regulator. So the question about ivermectin and self-medication goes back to what everyone in the scientific community is saying. And that is to say, we don’t know if it works and we don’t know if it doesn’t. That’s why we need data. “
Authorities in neighboring Zimbabwe also approved the use of ivermectin to treat coronavirus patients, after doctors at the Ministry of Health appealed an earlier ban on the drug’s import and use. Doctors in Zimbabwe use ivermectin in a solution containing nanosilver – which is used as an algaecide – and found the combination to be “a game changer,” the College of Primary Care Physicians said in a letter to the ministry.
Rees warned South Africans that people who self-medicate “should be very careful because we don’t have any information about the quality of what you use.”
Clear guidelines for the rollout of the controlled access program will be provided over the next two days, Semete-Makokotlela said. There are also plans to conduct large-scale clinical trials, she said.
It is not the first time that the use of promising Covid-19 treatments and drugs has been authorized with only preliminary evidence. Several drugs that were released for treatment last year are failed to replicate the initial benefits after being explored in large clinical studies.
Semete-Makokotlela also said the regulator has granted the health department permission to distribute the coronavirus vaccine from AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford, the first vaccine against Covid-19 vaccinations. It is also reviewing applications from rival manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer Inc., but has not yet received an application from Moderna Inc., she said.
The South African authority has also held pre-submission talks with “many other” vaccine manufacturers, including from China and Russia, Semete-Makokotlela said.
– With help from Desmond Kumbuka
(Updates showing Zimbabwe approving drug use in the second paragraph after the Desperation subheading)