Source: Buffalo News Author: Dan Herbeck
A State Supreme Court justice has ordered a Batavia hospital to administer the drug Ivermectin to an 81-year-old Covid-19 patient.
The case involving John W. Swanson, a farmer from Stafford in Genesee County, is the latest of several in which judges have ordered local hospitals to give Ivermectin to patients suffering from the virus. The drug is used to treat other ailments but is not yet approved by the federal government as a Covid-19 treatment.
Swanson was on a ventilator and “on death’s doorstep,” at the United Memorial Medical Center when doctors there gave him one dose of Ivermectin on April 1, according to an affidavit filed in court by attorneys for Swanson’s wife, Sandra.
“After that one dose, he started breathing on his own. He was taken off the ventilator and was making great progress,” said attorney Ralph C. Lorigo, who represents the Swanson family with Jon F. Minear. “Then, the hospital refused to give him additional doses.”
State Supreme Court Justice Frederick J. Marshall issued an order on April 2, directing the hospital to give Swanson four more doses of Ivermectin.
As of late Friday afternoon, his attorneys described Swanson as “stable.”
“I definitely think the Ivermectin is helping him,” Sandra Swanson told The Buffalo News, but she said she is upset and frustrated that hospital officials would not allow her to visit with her husband.
“They held the phone to his ear, and I read him a long list of people who are praying for him every day, about 20 people,” she said. “But I need to see him.”
While Ivermectin is not yet approved by the Food & Drug Administration as a treatment for Covid-19, many doctors – including some in Western New York – are offering the drug to their Covid-19 patients.
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