At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many vaccine skeptics turned to ivermectin, a medication proven to fight off parasitic diseases, to offer protection against the virus. As The Dispatch Fact Check reported repeatedly at the time, ivermectin has not been proven effective at either slowing the spread of COVID-19 or alleviating its symptoms.
Now, social media users are sharing claims that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized ivermectin to treat COVID-19. David Kurten—a British political commentator and failed candidate for Parliament in 2024, tweeted on Wednesday, “The FDA has now approved Ivermectin for ‘Covid’—5 years and 5,500,000,000 experimental injections too late.” His tweet received 1 million views within 24 hours of it being posted. “Criminal,” the right-wing internet personality known as “Catturd,” tweeted in response to Kurten.
A day before, an X account for an online pharmaceutical company that sells ivermectin, Skymeds Store, shared part of a Fox Business news segment from August 2023 in which anchor Maria Bartiromo claimed, incorrectly, that the FDA authorized ivermectin to treat COVID-19. “The FDA has now endorsed treating COVID with Ivermectin!” the company tweeted, with no mention that its attached news clip was 20 months old or that it was incorrect. It added: “How many people died because they were not allowed to use this or even talk about it?”
Skymeds Store also refutes the claim on its website, which states that ivermectin is used to treat “parasitic diseases … including parasitic worms, hookworm and whipworm.” It also states: “Ivermectin is currently being investigated in a clinical trial as a potential COVID-19 treatment for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Virus, which is the virus that causes COVID-19. The FDA has not approved ivermectin for use in treating or preventing COVID-19 infection in humans.”
The Fox Business news clip is from an August 11, 2023, segment between Bartiromo and GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. “We learned this morning that the FDA is now saying that it’s okay to take ivermectin if you have COVID,” Bartiromo said. “My COVID was gone in a day when I took ivermectin, and now, three years later, the FDA says, ‘oh, yeah, that’s fine. Take ivermectin.’”
Johnson also chimed in: “This was a Nobel Prize-winning medicine that could’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives.” He later shared a clip of the segment on X and wrote, “Doctors who had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients believe hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly because the FDA sabotaged the use of cheap, safe, and effective generic drugs. Now the FDA quietly approves ivermectin’s use? What’s going on?”
Bartiromo’s claim was incorrect, as a PolitiFact article found at the time, and the FDA has not authorized the anti-parasite drug for COVID-19 treatment since then. Johnson is correct that ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning drug: Irish-American microbiologist William C. Campbell and Japanese biochemist Satoshi Ōmura won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of avermectin (ivermectin is one type of various avermectin compounds), along with Chinese pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou, who developed the malaria-treating drug, artemisinin. But the award was unrelated to COVID.
The FDA’s website states that ivermectin has not been approved in “preventing or treating” COVID-19, because it could not find substantial evidence that “ivermectin is safe or effective” for use against COVID-19. Various studies have similarly concluded in recent years that the drug is not effective at COVID-19 prevention or treatment.
The Dispatch Fact Check has reached out to the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for comment.
