A new peer-reviewed study says the greatest extent of ivermectin distributions in Peru in 2020 “saw a mean reduction in excess deaths of 74% at 30 days after peak deaths.”

The study, titled ‘COVID-19 Excess Deaths in Peru’s 25 States in 2020: Nationwide Trends, Confounding Factors, and Correlations With the Extent of Ivermectin Treatment by State,’ stated: “an opportunity to track the efficacy of IVM with a close consideration of confounding factors was provided through data for excess deaths as correlated with IVM use in 2020, under semi-autonomous policies in its [Peru’s] 25 states.”

The researchers found “reductions in excess deaths over a period of 30 days after peak deaths averaged 74% in the 10 states with the most intensive IVM use. As determined across all 25 states, these reductions in excess deaths correlated closely with the extent of IVM use (p<0.002).”

“During four months of IVM use in 2020, before a new president of Peru restricted its use, there was a 14-fold reduction in nationwide excess deaths and then a 13-fold increase in the two months following the restriction of IVM use,” the researchers wrote.

“Notably, these trends in nationwide excess deaths align with WHO summary data for the same period in Peru.”

From the study’s conclusions via Cureus:

The natural experiment that was put into motion with the authorization of IVM use for COVID-19 in Peru in May 2020, as analyzed using data on excess deaths by locality and by state from Peruvian national health sources, resulted in strong evidence for the drug’s effectiveness. Several potential confounding factors, including effects of a social isolation mandate imposed in May 2020, variations in the genetic makeup of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and differences in seropositivity rates and population densities across the 25 states, were considered but did not appear to have significantly influenced these outcomes.

Cont. from the study:

Following the authorization on May 8, 2020, each of the 25 states of Peru implemented inpatient and outpatient treatments with IVM to different extents and in different time frames, as detailed below. The government of Peru independently tracked two indices of the pandemic’s mortality, state by state, daily: COVID-19 case fatalities and all-cause deaths, the latter index enabling calculations of excess deaths. Further complicating the epidemiological record, on November 17, 2020, a new president of Peru, Francisco Sagasti, took office [7]. Government distributions of IVM, the channel by which most patients had obtained it previously, were then stopped, with its further use allowed only by a doctor’s prescription [8-12]. Nationwide changes in daily excess all-cause deaths before and after these restrictions in IVM use will be presented in the Results section.

“IVM was typically distributed through regional health offices, voluntary channels, and other private groups, as detailed for several states,” the study says.

“However, 10 states distributed IVM on a mass scale through a national program led by the Ministry of Defense, Mega-Operación Tayta (MOT).”

The study’s discussion states:

The 25 states of Peru that conducted IVM treatments for COVID-19 at different time periods provide a robust set of subpopulations in which the treatment impacts can be evaluated. For the 10 MOT states, excess deaths dropped most sharply, by mean values of 74% at +30 days and 86% at +45 days after the date of peak deaths. For the 14 states with locally administered IVM distributions, excess deaths dropped by means of 53% at +30 days and 60% at +45 days. In Lima, however, where IVM treatments were delayed until August, four months after its initial pandemic surge in April, excess deaths dropped by only 25% at +30 days and by only 25% at +45 days after its date of peak deaths on May 30. The MOT states had sharp drops in excess deaths after reaching peak values in close time conjunction after MOT start dates (Figure 2B). For the full set of 25 states, reductions in excess deaths correlated with the extent of IVM distribution, maximal, medium, or minimal, with p<0.002 using the (two-tailed) Kendall τb test.

Given the association between IVM treatments and sharp mortality reductions revealed in this analysis, neither random fluctuation nor an unidentified, extraneous cause of these reductions in deaths appears likely. However, it is useful to consider the potential confounding influences of social isolation, changing seropositivity rates, variations in viral strains across states, and other factors. To begin with the most straightforward of these considerations, potential distortions caused by varying proportions of younger or older people in the population of any given state of Peru or by potential changes in percentage of COVID-19 cases across different age groups were ruled out by including only the population age 60 and above in the analysis. Moreover, for each of the 25 states of Peru, for the subpopulation of age ≥60, it was found that no more than 2.2% of that group died during the period of March-November 2020 [14]. Reductions of at most 2.2% of the total population aged ≥60 in each state were very small in comparison to pandemic-related fluctuations of more than 200% in all-cause deaths in 2020 [14].

The possibility that a more virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2 caused more fatalities in Lima than elsewhere in Peru was discounted by an analysis of 149 genomes from COVID-19 patients in Peru obtained through July 4, 2020 from diverse geographical regions of the country [16]. This genomic analysis found that the phylogenetic clades in 11 states had a distribution similar to that of Lima. Note that the UK variant of SARS-CoV-2, first detected in Peru on January 8, 2021 [84], cannot explain the post-November 2020 national surge in excess deaths, as shown in Figure 2A, because prior to then, excess deaths (all ages) had already tripled from 48 on December 1 to 150 on January 1 [13,76]. A Pan-American survey found that no other mutations of potential interest to public health, including 501Y.V2 and P.1, were detected in Peru as of mid-January 2021 [85].

The possibility that varying compliance with social isolation mandates in the different states of Peru could account for varying impacts of the pandemic is discounted by Google community mobility data shown in Figure 3. These data demonstrate that for Lima, the 10 MOT states and the 14 states with local IVM distributions, mobility patterns from March through November 2020 were roughly the same and that excess deaths fell in all states except Lima as mobility rose in their respective first waves of the pandemic.

In related news, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a BIG ivermectin admission.

In a 180 degree flip-flop a politician would be jealous of, the FDA now admits doctors can prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

FDA Makes BIG Ivermectin Admission!

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