Fact Check: NIH Not Recommending Ivermectin for COVID

A viral tweet falsely claims otherwise.

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A viral tweet, which has been shared more than 17,000 times, claims that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is recommending ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. “Suddenly Ivermectin shows up on the NIH website for treating Covid,” the tweet reads. “After years of denial, blocking, interference, villification [sic], ruining social media accounts, killing people, etc. they silently add it to their antiviral protocol.”

(Ivermectin, as we reported  in an earlier fact check, is an anti-parasitic medication that some have used to treat COVID-19 despite little evidence of efficacy.) 

 The tweet is accompanied by a screenshot that appears to be from the NIH on “COVID-19 treatment guidelines.”

This is a false claim. The NIH is not recommending ivermectin to treat COVID-19. 

The screenshot from the viral tweet is from the NIH’s COVID-19 treatment guidelines website, which lists different sections that “summarize the data on ritonavir-boosted nirmatrelvir, remdesivir, and other antiviral medications.” The NIH guidelines page simply lists data on various antiviral therapies— it does not endorse them. As of now, according to the NIH: “Remdesivir, an antiviral agent, is currently the only drug that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of COVID-19.” 

“The inclusion of ivermectin to the treatment guidelines is not new,” an NIH spokesperson said in an email to The Dispatch Fact Check. “Importantly, the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.”

The NIH website, last updated on April 29, explains that several trials have assessed ivermectin, but the “primary outcomes of these trials showed that the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 had no clinical benefit.”

Only a few studies of ivermectin “have been adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted,” the NIH says. “More recent clinical trials address the limitations of earlier studies but fail to show clear evidence that ivermectin reduces time to recovery or prevents COVID-19 disease progression.”

More than once, the NIH website reads: “The Panel recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in a clinical trial.”

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Mike from Jersey

    But it’s on the Interweb, it must be true.

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  2. Jon

    Of course they aren’t recommending it. Not like it hasn’t eradicated COVID in India!

    Jill Biden- a woman who has nothing been more than a wife and teacher is worth $50 million.

    Answer the question as to how that’s possible and you will have the answer to why we are mandated to take vaccines that last for 3 months and are discouraged from using cheap meds that actually have been shown to work significantly in other areas of the world.

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    1. Dustin M

      The vaccines don't simply "last for 3 months". You're conflating different types of immune responses and efficacy levels. Antibody response can only last about that long, but the vaccines give T-cell immunity as well which is what really makes the difference in being able to fight off an infection successfully (i.e. getting sick and recovering at home in a few days vs. taking a very long time to recover vs. being hospitalized before recovering vs. dying). That's why even people not getting additional booster doses beyond the initial 2-dose regimen have continued to fare way better than the unvaccinated. As far as I can tell, the extra boosters pretty much only replenish the antibodies which can conceivably help your body just laugh off the infection (or at least they could before the more recent mutations of the virus) without even getting sick but my read of the data is that the initial 2-dose regimen did its job in the T-cell department without any clear evidence of that waning over time. It's all much less important with the modern variants that are no longer as severe since they mutated into nose/throat viruses instead of lung viruses but this mattered a great deal when the delta wave took the lives of 7 or 8 unvaccinated people just in my church alone (vs. no deaths in that time period for vaccinated as far as I am aware even though plenty of people had been vaccinated ~6 months or so prior to delta).

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    2. Avatar photo
      Pat @ Tavi Hall

      Let's take a look at Covid in less developed parts of the world.

      In Africa, it's been markedly different. Here's a summary of thinking on this https://theconversation.com/the-impact-of-covid-19-has-been-lower-in-africa-we-explore-the-reasons-16495. It appears the age factor is the number one reason.

      I assume that India has a lower medium age as well, and that rural India likely has an even lower medium age. You can see that in their fatality numbers, https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/age-break-up-of-covid-19-toll/cid/1774891

      Further young deaths are higher such that I assume had to do with overall lack of health care. As noted above in Africa covid deaths were higher in those with parasites than those without or under treatment for parasites. Here in the US, I can't think that I've ever known someone with a tape worm or something similar and I'm over 60 so that's a lot of people.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Tom B.

        India's COVID numbers were and are vastly undercounted. Here's a decent explainer from the BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60981318

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    3. Avatar photo
      PeteC

      COVID has most certainly not been eradicated in India. You can see the growth in total cases here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ .

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    4. Avatar photo
      George.Skinner

      Unfortunately, you've got the causation all wrong. There were some early studies that showed a reduced COVID mortality rate among people who were taking Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication. These studies were all from places with endemic intestinal parasites. What was actually happening is that COVID was killing more people already weakened by parasite infections than the people who had those infections treated with Ivermectin. If you've got a tapeworm infection, go ahead and get a prescription for Ivermectin - you don't need to wait for COVID to want to get that out of your system.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Bruce Stouffer

        To this point I have been agnostic regarding ivermectin’s effectiveness against COVID. In my personal circle, I’m surrounded by people who believe in it, including my father who practically became an evangelist for it. It was relatively easy for me to dismiss all the stolen-election talk, but I’ll confess I’ve had a harder time knowing what to think about ivermectin, so I’m always interested in reading people’s views about it here. I hadn’t seen any rejoinders to the claims that it has worked in other countries, so what you wrote above is something for me to consider.

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        1. Jeff D

          You might find this interesting: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted#%C2%A7the-synthesis

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            Bruce Stouffer

            Interesting. Thank you.

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      2. Jon

        Early treatment with cocktail treatment of Anti-viral/parasitic, Z-Pack and Zinc have been known to be highly effective treatment against COVID since the very early days of COVID. This whole “pandemic” has been a scam from the beginning.

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          Rjosephpaquette

          I am a physician and can assure you your claim on covid treatment is simply not true. And TD should fact check your claim.

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          Dave M

          There’s a difference between highly effective versus widely prescribed by a minority of doctors. There’s a reason we don’t use anecdotal evidence but instead rely on randomized trials. You gave it away with the use of scare quotes anyway.

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          1. Jon

            If minority means India, South America and the entire continent of Africa then OK.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Rjosephpaquette

    With Hundreds of thousands of people dying, physicians grasped at anything at hand early on in the pandemic. That included many drugs that turned out not to be of any help. I don’t fault those who prescribed them early on—but any physician still touting Ivermectin or HCQ for Covid is committing malpractice.

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