A Cincinnati hospital won’t be forced to continue to treat a COVID patient on a ventilator with Ivermectin, a medicine used to get rid of worms and an unproven drug to treat the virus. That comes after a judge overruled a previous order from a fellow judge in the same court.
Butler County Judge Michael Oster Jr. denied a previous order from another Butler County Common Pleas judge ordering UC Health West Chester Hospital to treat 51-year-old Jeffrey Smith with Ivermectin prescribed by a doctor from Centerville who hadn’t seen Smith and didn’t have privileges at the hospital.
Smith’s wife had sued when the hospital refused to use the drug.
Oster wrote that he’s sympathetic but that the CDC and major medical organizations have said it’s not a treatment for COVID.
UC Health had argued for the freedom to decline to use the drug under a new “medical conscience” clause in the state budget allowing health care providers to refuse treatments that violate their beliefs.
People are also going into farmer supply stores and buying the non-prescription version of the drug. That’s prompted calls to poison control lines nationwide. In fact, so much off-label usage has been happening that the FDA issued a warning about its safety.
The false claim that parasite-fighting drug Ivermectin is known to be a cure for COVID-19 has been circulating on social media for weeks, and some online doctors have been prescribing it.
People are also going into farmer supply stores and buying the non-prescription version of the drug that is intended to treat livestock.
NPR reports Ivermectin is sometimes prescribed to people for head lice or skin conditions, but the formulas are different for humans and animals.
