LOUISVILLE , Ky. — A judge on Wednesday denied a request to pressure docs at a Louisville hospital to deal with a COVID-19 affected person with the drug ivermectin.
Ivermectin is primarily used to deal with parasites in livestock and isn’t authorised by the Food and Drug Administration as a therapy for COVID-19.
Angela Underwood filed a lawsuit Sept. 9 in Jefferson County Circuit Court trying to compel docs at Norton Brownsboro Hospital to provide her husband, Lonnie, the drug to deal with COVID-19. Court data point out she is representing herself within the case.
“As a Registered Nurse, I demand my husband be administered ivermectin whether by a Norton physician or another health care provider of my choosing including myself if necessary,” Underwood wrote in her criticism, which was later amended to request her husband be treated with “intravenous vitamin c.”
The judge’s determination echoes that of an Ohio ruling this month that mentioned a Cincinnati space hospital couldn’t be compelled to manage ivermectin to a COVID-19 affected person after docs refused to make use of the drug.
Despite main medical teams and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioning towards using ivermectin, use of ivermectin has spiked throughout the nation as COVID-19 circumstances surge. The Kentucky Poison Control Center has mentioned it has seen a rise in calls associated to misuse of ivermectin.
Still, the drug has been promoted as a therapy by some distinguished conservatives, together with former President Donald Trump.
Underwood claimed the hospital wouldn’t permit her husband’s physician to deal with her husband with the drug.
But in accordance with the ruling, that physician — who wrote an emergency privileges order to provide the person ivermectin — didn’t have privileges on the hospital the place Lonnie Underwood was being treated or at any hospital “providing care for critically ill COVID patients.”
According to the hospital, the physician “refused to come see his patient,” Jefferson Circuit Judge Charles Cunningham wrote within the ruling. He added that the court docket “cannot require a hospital to literally take orders from someone who does not routinely issue such orders.”
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Cunningham wrote that Underwood may attempt to discover a hospital that “believes in the efficacy of these therapies.”
“This is impractical because it is likely that no such hospital in the United States, or certainly in this region, agrees with Plaintiff,” Cunningham wrote. “Moreover, her husband’s medical circumstances may make such a transfer unjustifiably risky.”
Similar case: Ohio judge guidelines hospital can not be compelled to provide ivermectin to COVID affected person
Initially, Circuit Court Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman did order the hospital to deal with Lonnie Underwood with ivermectin “if medically indicated and ordered by an appropriate physician,” in accordance with court docket data. Court data present the identical judge granted on Tuesday an “emergency injunction to administer intravenous Vitamin C.”
But Cunningham stepped in as judge when reconsidering the case as a result of a scheduling battle with the opposite judge.
A spokeswoman for Norton Healthcare directed a reporter from the Courier Journal, a part of the USA TODAY Network, to the court docket ruling when requested for touch upon the case.
Underwood didn’t instantly reply to a message in search of remark.
Contributing: Christine Fernando, USA TODAY; Billy Kobin, Courier Journal
Follow Mary Ramsey on Twitter @mcolleen1996.
This article initially appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ivermectin and COVID: Louisville judge denies Angela Underwood request
