Mexico City Officials in Hot Water for Giving Anti-Parasitic Drug to Thousands of COVID-19 Patients

By Jess Smith First Posted: Feb 10, 2022 02:34 AM EST

A United States academic site blasted Mexico City officials for distributing the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to people who tested positive for COVID-19 early in the pandemic.

Ivermectin is not approved by Mexico's federal government or the World Health Organization (WHO) for the treatment of COVID-19. But the city officials still distributed tens of thousands of medical kits containing ivermectin to COVID-19 patients at Mexico City testing stations from December 2020 to September 2021.

Mexico News Daily reported that the city government and the federally-run Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) conducted a "quasi experimental" analysis. The study found that people who received the ivermectin were 68 percent less likely to develop serious symptoms that will require hospitalization.

José Antonio Peña Merino, the head of Mexico City's Digital Agency for Public Innovation (ADIP), City Health Minister Oliva López Arellano, and other officials co-authored a paper detailing the results of the study that were published on the U.S.-based academic website SocArXic, which is reportedly an open archive of the social sciences.

But according to the Washington Post, SocArXiv withdrew it last Friday, claiming it was "promoting an unproved medical treatment in the midst of a global pandemic." The site also accused city officials of bad science and unethical behavior - more or less like using people in the same way as rats in a laboratory experiment without their consent.

In a statement, Philip N. Cohen, the sociologist at the University of Maryland who runs the online archive, said that "depending on which critique you prefer, the paper is either very poor quality or else deliberately false and misleading."

Cohen noted that the paper was downloaded more than 11,000 times and was among SocArXic's "most-read papers" of the past year.

SocArXiv has provided a forum for social scientists since 2016 to share their research before it's been peer-reviewed. In the fast-moving era of the COVID-19, such sites have grown in popularity as academics try to share their new findings and receive quick feedback from colleagues.

Ivermectin is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved prescription drug used to treat certain infections caused by internal and external parasites such as parasitic worms and head lice and has not been authorized to prevent or treat COVID-19.

But despite warnings from international health authorities that there is insufficient evidence of any benefit, anti-vaccine activists worldwide have pushed the drug as a cure for COVID-19.

200,000 Medical Kits With Ivermectin Distributed in Mexico City

According to the news website Animal Político, some 200,000 people who tested positive for COVID-19 received medical kits containing ivermectin, paracetamol, aspirin, and oximeters.

Mexico City reportedly spent almost 29.3 million pesos (US$1.4 million) for these medical kits. City officials eventually declared the operation a success. Last spring, they issued an academic paper claiming that the medical kits had significantly lowered hospitalization rates.

They said the finding "supports ivermectin-based interventions" to reduce the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on health systems. Now city officials are facing a backlash, with opposition politicians demanding an investigation.

Mexico City Defends the Distribution of Ivermectin

Mexico City Health Minister Oliva López Arellano said the decision to use ivermectin was made before vaccines were widely available and at "a different moment" in the pandemic.

Arellano noted that some other cities worldwide were also offering ivermectin COVID-positive residents. She added that health professionals always gave out only kits with safe doses.

Arellano said the real problem was not such limited doses, but a trend of citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere poisoning themselves with large amounts of ivermectin or even using a version intended for animals.

However, Mexico's own drug regulatory body has not authorized ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. The country's senior health officials, including coronavirus czar Hugo López-Gatell, had repeatedly warned the public not to use ivermectin for COVID-19.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

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