Physicians in many parts of the world needing inexpensive, effective Covid treatments have turned to Ivermectin with encouraging success.  This news is largely ignored, but is now being compiled and promoted by frontline medical caregivers.

Dominican Republic One Example of Ivermectin Results

For example, consider the experience of Dominican Republic, a nation whose primary industry of tourism has been decimated by the pandemic.  At newspaper Dominican Today Doctor explains 99.3% of COVID-19 patients treated with Ivermectin recovered in five days.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

After eight months of active clinical observation and attending about 7 thousand patients of Covid-19 in three medical centers located in Puerto Plata, La Romana, and Punta Cana, Dr. José Natalio Redondo revealed that 99.3% of the symptomatic patients who received care in his emergency services, including the use of Ivermectin, managed to recover in the first five days of recorded symptoms.

The renowned cardiologist and health manager affirmed that Ivermectin’s use against the symptoms of Covid-19 is practically generalized in the country and attributed to this factor, among others, the fact that the risk of dying from this disease in the Dominican Republic is significantly lower than in the United States.

He added that “in a therapeutic format duly tested over the years, infections have always been cured faster and leave fewer sequelae if antimicrobial treatment is applied as early as possible since this allows the use of lower doses of the selected drugs. This has been one of the dogmas that remain in our daily medical practice.”

The key is early treatment.

“From the beginning, our team of medical specialists, who were at the forefront of the battle, led by our emergency physicians, intensivists and internists, raised the need to see this disease in a different way than that proposed by international health organizations, says Dr. Redondo in his report.

And he adds that the Group’s experts proposed the urgency of reorienting the management protocols towards earlier and more timely stages. “We realized that the war was being lost because of the obsession of large groups, agencies, and companies linked to research and production of drugs, to focus their interest almost exclusively on the management of critical patients.

“Our results were immediate; the use of Ivermectin, together with Azithromycin and Zinc (plus the usual vitamins that tend to increase the immune response of individuals) produced an impressive variation in the course of the disease; it was demonstrated that 99.3% of the patients recovered quickly when the treatment was started in the first five days of proven symptoms, with an average of 3.5 days, and a fall of more than 50% in the rate and duration of hospitalizations, and reducing from 9 to 1 the mortality rate, when the treatment was started on time.”

The Global Review of Ivermectin Protocol Studies

The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) provides historical and global perspective on this treatment protocol Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Recommended Protocol

Despite the growing list of failed therapeutics in COVID-19, the FLCCC recently discovered that ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine, has highly potent real-world, anti-viral, and anti-inflammatory properties against SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. This conclusion is based on the increasing study results reporting effectiveness, not only within in-vitro and animal models, but also in numerous clinical trials from centers and countries around the world. Repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes have now been reported when ivermectin is used not only as a prophylactic agent but also in mild, moderate, and even severe disease states from multiple, large, randomized and observational controlled trials. Further, data showing impacts on population wide health outcomes have resulted from multiple large “natural experiments” that appear to have occurred when various regional health ministries and governmental authorities within South American countries initiated “ivermectin distribution” campaigns to their citizen populations in the hopes the drug would prove effective. The tight, reproducible, temporally associated decreases in case counts and case fatality rates in each of those regions compared to nearby regions without such campaigns, suggest that ivermectin is proving to be a global solution to the pandemic. This is now further evidenced by the recent incorporation of ivermectin as a prophylaxis and treatment agent for COVID19 in the national treatment guidelines of Egypt as well as the state of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, populated by 210 million people.

[The article provides a comprehensive review of the available efficacy data as of November 8, 2020, taken from in-vitro, animal, clinical, and real-world studies all showing the above impacts of ivermectin in COVID-19.]

The FLCCC recommendation is based on the following set of conclusions derived from the existing data, which will be comprehensively reviewed below:

1) Since 2012, multiple in-vitro studies have demonstrated that Ivermectin inhibits the replication of many viruses, including influenza, Zika, Dengue and others (19–27).

2) Ivermectin inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication, leading to absence of nearly all viral material by 48h in infected cell cultures (28).

3) Ivermectin has potent anti-inflammatory properties with in-vitro data demonstrating profound inhibition of both cytokine production and transcription of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), the most potent mediator of inflammation (29–31).

4) Ivermectin significantly diminishes viral load and protects against organ damage in multiple animal models when infected with SARS-CoV-2 or similar coronaviruses (32, 33).

5) Ivermectin prevents transmission and development of COVID-19 disease in those exposed to infected patient (34–36,54).

6) Ivermectin hastens recovery and prevents deterioration in patients with mild to moderate disease treated early after symptoms (37–42,54).

7) Ivermectin hastens recovery and avoidance of ICU admission and death in hospitalized patients (40,43,45,54,63,67).

8) Ivermectin reduces mortality in critically ill patients with COVID-19 (43,45,54).

9) Ivermectin leads to striking reductions in case-fatality rates in regions with widespread use (46-48).

10) The safety, availability, and cost of ivermectin is nearly unparalleled given its near nil drug interactions along with only mild and rare side effects observed in almost 40 years of use and billions of doses administered (49).

11) The World Health Organization has long included ivermectin on its “List of Essential Medicines” (50).

Ivermectin in Post-COVID-19 Syndrome

Increasing reports of persistent, vexing, and even disabling symptoms after recovery from acute COVID-19 have been reported and which many have termed the condition as “long Covid” and patients as “long haulers”, estimated to occur in approximately 10% of cases (77–79). Generally considered as a post-viral syndrome consisting of a chronic and sometimes disabling constellation of symptoms which include, in order, fatigue, shortness of breath, joint pains and chest pain. Many patients describe their most disabling symptom as impaired memory and concentration, often with extreme fatigue, described as “brain fog”, and are highly suggestive of the condition myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition well-reported to begin after viral infections, in particular with Epstein-Barr virus. Although no specific treatments have been identified for long COVID, a recent manuscript by Aguirre-Chang et al from the National University of San Marcos in Peru reported on the experience with ivermectin in such patients (80). They treated 33 patients who were between 4 and 12 weeks from the onset of symptoms with escalating doses of ivermectin; 0.2mg/kg for 2 days if mild, 0.4mg/kg for 2 days if moderate, with doses extended if symptoms persisted. They found that in 87.9% of the patients, resolution of all symptoms was observed after two doses with an additional 7% reporting complete resolution after additional doses. Their experience suggests the need for controlled studies to better test efficacy in this vexing syndrome.

In summary, based on the existing and cumulative body of evidence, we recommend the use of ivermectin in both prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19. In the presence of a global COVID-19 surge, the widespread use of this safe, inexpensive, and effective intervention could lead to a drastic reduction in transmission rates as well as the morbidity and mortality in mild, moderate, and even severe disease phases.