Ivermectin Doesn’t Help Covid, But Generic Drug Makers Are Cashing In
Despite widespread medical doubts about the livestock deworming medicine, some foreign producers don’t seem to care.
Before the pandemic, Taj Pharmaceuticals Ltd. shipped negligible amounts of ivermectin to Russia for veterinary use. But over the past year it’s become a popular product for the Indian generic drug maker: Since July 2020, Taj Pharma has sold $5 million worth of the pills for human use in India and overseas. That’s a bonanza for a small family-owned company with an annual revenue of about $66 million.
Sales of the drug, which is primarily approved to treat diseases caused by parasites in livestock and humans, have surged around the world as anti-vaccine propagandists and others tout it as a Covid-19 cure. They claim it could end the pandemic if only people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would open their eyes to it. “We are working 24/7,” says Shantanu Kumar Singh, Taj Pharma’s 30-year-old executive director. “The demand is huge.”