A Nigerian-born doctor, Stella Immanuel, on Monday said she had successfully treated more than 350 people in the United States with coronavirus using hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Zithromax.
Immanuel disclosed this when she addressed the press after America’s Frontline Doctors Summit in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, July 27.
She had first touted the effectiveness of the drug on April 27.
“Hydroxychloroquine works if given early. President Trump we are with you. Many of us doctors know it and have used it. Don’t stop speaking up for us,” she tweeted.
Hydroxychloroquine has long been used to treat malaria as well as other conditions such as lupus and arthritis.
It’s used to reduce fever and inflammation, and the hope has been that it can also inhibit the virus that causes Covid-19.
US President Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro have since claimed hydroxychloroquine could prevent or treat COVID-19.
“I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with COVID,” Immanuel said in video that has gone viral.
“Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people … I think my oldest patient is 92 … 87-year-olds. And the result has been the same. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax, and they’re all well.”
She said she put herself, her staff and other doctors she knew on hydroxychloroquine for prevention of COVID-19.
“We see patients, 10 to 15 COVID patients, every day,” she said.
“We give them breathing treatments. We only wear surgical mask. None of us has gotten sick. It works.”
Video of Stella speaking quickly went viral gaining more than 13 million views on Facebook and Youtube. In fact, the video was the 2nd top post on all of Facebook in the last 24 hours, according to CrowdTangle data.
Immanuel pointed to a study published by the United States’ National Institute of Health to back up her claims on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and claimed in that much-maligned big pharma companies may have conspired against the use of the hydroxychloroquine to COVID-19.
However, the Food and Drug Administration a federal agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services cautioned against using hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients.
National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s foremost medical research centres in the US, also shared the same sentiment and halted its clinical trial of the drug, finding that it provided no benefits.
Also, the Recovery trial run by Oxford University has involved 11,000 patients with coronavirus in hospitals across the UK and included testing hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness against the disease, along with other potential treatments.
It concluded that “there is no beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalised with Covid-19” and the drug has now been pulled from the trial.
There’s been some hope that hydroxychloroquine could be effective if used early on when a person gets the virus before there’s a need for them to be hospitalised.
However, there’s no clear evidence on this and the jury is very much out as to its effectiveness in the early stages of infection.
There are in fact overall more than 200 trials currently underway around the world on its impact either as a prophylactic or treatment for Covid-19.
Stella, however, said she did not need to do a double-blind study because it was unethical.
“All of you doctors that are waiting for data, if six months down the line you actually found out that this data shows that this medication works, how about your patients that have died?,” she said.
“We don’t need to die. There is a cure for COVID,” she insisted.
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