Coronavirus: Indian govt pitches for 'unscientific' traditional remedies to manage outbreak, faces backlash
Scientists are racing to create a vaccine for Wuhan coronavirus, which currently has no known cure. However, the Indian government issued a bizarre advisory on Wednesday with no proven scientific basis, advocating homeopathy for "prevention" of the virus and Unani medicines for “symptomatic management” of the infection.
The advisory does not mention any scientific evidence behind making such recommendations.
“At the instance of Ministry of AYUSH, Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy (CCRH) discussed the ways and means of prevention of coronavirus infection through homeopathy in 64th meeting of its Scientific Advisory Board on January 28th, 2020,” says the advisory issued by the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurvedic, Yoga, and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) dated January 29.
The advisory lists “prophylactic measures/immunomodulatory drugs as per the Ayurvedic practices”. It also mentions a list of Unani medicines, which the document claims is “useful in the symptomatic management of coronavirus infection.”
“The group of experts inter-alia has recommended that homeopathy medicine Arsenicum album 30 could be taken as prophylactic medicine against coronavirus infections. It has recommended one dose of Arsenicum album 30, daily in empty stomach for three days. The dose should be repeated after one month by following the same schedule incase coronavirus infections prevail in the community,” it says.
After the Press Information Bureau (PIB) of India tweeted regarding the advisory, it drew immediate and immense criticism from people, who took to Twitter to slam the unscientific document. While reacting to the advisory, people used words such as “extremely irresponsible”, “downright shameful,” “dangerous”, “madness”, “fake news”, “disgrace” “misleading at best and willful endangerment of public at worst,” “potentially life-endangering advice,” and “outrageous” in their tweets.
Some said the tweet should be deleted and that one should not advocate quackery as a preventative for a deadly disease.
The Wuhan coronavirus has so far killed 170 and infected 7,711 in China. No deaths have been reported outside China. There is no specific antiviral treatment recommended for 2019 coronavirus infection.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that people infected with the Wuhan coronavirus should receive supportive care to help relieve symptoms.
According to Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), there is currently no proven therapy for coronavirus infection.
A select number of patients in China are being treated with antiviral drugs, including Remdesivir (initially developed as an Ebola treatment), and a drug called Kaletra, a combination of two antiretroviral drugs.
"I must emphasize there is no proven efficacy of these, but they are being pursued together with the screening of a number of other agents. I might point out that is why it's so important that we get isolates of the virus, which we will soon have," said Fauci during a press briefing.
The NIAID, a center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is also working on developing a vaccine and start early-stage human testing in three months for this new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans.
However, according to Nature, no drugs have been shown to be effective in treating SARS or other coronavirus infections in humans, and no vaccines aimed at preventing these infections have been licensed.
Student tests positive in Southern Indian state
The Indian government, meanwhile, confirmed the first positive case of Wuhan coronavirus in the Southern state of Kerala. "One positive case of Novel Coronavirus patient, of a student studying in Wuhan University, has been reported in Kerala. The patient has tested positive for Novel Coronavirus and is in isolation in the hospital. The patient is stable and is being closely monitored," read a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare release.