Health DG: Avoid COVID-19 'cures' sold online

PUTRAJAYA: The public is advised not to be deceived by medicines advertised on online shopping application that are purportedly effective in treating COVID-19 infection.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that thus far, no drug has been proven effective and able to treat individuals with COVID-19 infection.

He said that if there was a drug that could cure COVID-19, the individual behind it would have become a millionaire by now.

“Thus far, there is still no effective medicine to treat this disease and if they have a cure (for COVID-19) for sure this individual would become wealthy because the whole world is looking for this medicine,” he said at a press conference on the latest developments on COVID-19 yesterday.

He said this when asked to comment on a drug advertisement that claimed to be able to cure COVID-19, which is sold online.

A check by Bernama on the online shopping application found that the medicines were from China and priced at RM12.

On Monday, Dr Noor Hisham said that the use of remdesivir antiviral drugs was found to be ineffective in treating COVID-19 patients, as well as not helping to reduce the number of deaths related to the outbreak.

He said that a clinical study by the World Health Organisation (WHO), namely ‘Solidarity trial’, also proved that the anti-malarial drugs hydroxychloroquine, as well as ‘lopinavir’ and ‘ritonavir’, were ineffective in treating the pandemic.

However, Dr Noor Hisham said the antiviral drug dexamethasone, a drug that prevents pneumonia, was found to be effective and yield positive results to the health of COVID-19 patients.

-- BERNAMA