A viral headline on Facebook claims that a vaccine is not “necessary” for COVID-19 because “a cure already exists.” But the so-called “cure” is an asthma drug, touted by a Texas doctor, that has not yet been shown in clinical trials as an effective remedy for COVID-19, although researchers are exploring its effectiveness.
In a video interview shared on social media in early July, a Texas promised a “miracle solution” and a “cure” for COVID-19.
The answer, Dr. Richard Bartlett claimed, is an existing asthma medicine — inhaled budesonide, a corticosteroid — whose success, he suggests, negates the need for a vaccine. The video has racked up 4 million views on YouTube and its claims have migrated elsewhere. A headline shared on Facebook nearly 40,000 times, for example, claims that “COVID-19 No Vaccine Needed, There Is Already A Cure.”
But experts say the medication has not yet been proven as an effective treatment for COVID-19 and, even if helpful, wouldn’t dismiss the need for a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that causes the disease — which would help to prevent people from becoming sick in the first place. The World Health Organization also notes that there is “currently no licensed medication to cure COVID-19.”
Bartlett, a general practice doctor who initiated a short-lived run for Congress as a Republican in 2019, said in his interview on the conservative talk show “America Can We Talk?” that he uses a nebulizer machine to administer the budesonide. He said he also uses zinc and clarithromycin, an antibiotic.
“My miraculous solution is inhaled budesonide,” he says. “It’s working. One hundred percent of my patients are alive. He said patients” tell me “I feel better about the first treatment,” so his chest pain goes away, his shortness of breath disappears and his fever breaks.”
Describing a patient’s success, he describes the remedy as “curative.”
Mona Bafadhel, associate professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Oxford, told us in an email that “there is NO evidence to recommend that inhaled budesonide or any other inhaled steroid (SCI) be a cure for COVID.” (He’s on it)
Bafadhel is recently conducting a randomized, controlled clinical trial to read about the use of inhaled budesonide to treat patients with early COVID-19 infection.
“If ICS were proven to be successful, as a treatment, this would NOT mean we don’t need a vaccine,” she said.
Dr. Mitchell Grayson, professor of pediatrics and head of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the National Children’s Hospital, Ohio State University School of Medicine, also said in a telephone interview that “the jury is absent” to determine whether inhaled corticosteroids will help with COVID-19’s remedy. In short, Grayson assessed the lack of evidence on the factor for the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
“I don’t see any strong sign that inhaled steroids are going to be noticeably better,” he said, however, a clinical trial is the only way to locate him more definitively.
Grayson said one option is that the steroid can alter the immune system’s overreaction to the disease, as this overreaction can lead others to become seriously ill.
Bartlett recently presented a website, “covidsilverbullet.com,” where he published a case of inhaled budesonide involving two patients treated with telemedicine. Patients, a 63-year-old woguy and a 38-year-old boy, are said to have pre-existing situations and also use other medications.
“It’s very difficult to queue or queue” with the case study, Grayson said.
A giant randomized clinical trial conducted in the UK through the RECOVERY organization found that 22.9% of PATIENTS with COVID-19 gained dexamethasone, some other steroid, orally or intravenously within 28 days, compared to 25.7% of patients receiving normal care. It is the maximum effective in patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation.
The study only read about hospitalized patients and not inhaled steroids. It also did not find advantages for those who did not get respiratory assistance.
In a July 30 observation of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Bafadhel and Dan Nicolau, a physician and mathematician at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, hypothesized that inhaled corticosteroids “could be a healing intervention for COVID-19 for a number of reasons.”
“We recommend that CSI may have a dual role: first, decrease the inflammatory reaction [similar to acute respiratory misery syndrome] affecting a minority of COVID-19 patients; and second, directly inhibit viral replication,” they note. They later added, “It is unclear whether the use of CSI protects against COVID-19, but dismissing this assumption as foolish is premature.”
In addition to Bafadehl’s study, there are several other clinical trials also exploring inhaled corticosteroids and COVID-19.
But in the viral video, Bartlett dubiously suggests the medication is already being used so widely as to keep COVID-19 fatalities low in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Iceland. “They’re doing what I’m doing … an inhaled steroid,” he claims.
WHO, in a document provided to FactCheck.org, said that “there is no evidence to recommend that inhaled corticosteroids have reduced the rate of jurisprudence in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Iceland.”
Taiwan, with a population of nearly 24 million, has reported only 475 COVID-19 cases and seven deaths — but it’s not because of an inhaled steroid, said Tsung-Mei Cheng, a health policy research analyst at Princeton University who has written about Taiwan’s health care system and closely follows the country’s COVID-19 response.
Cheng said in a phone interview that she had “never” heard of such a treatment being responsible for low fatalities. Instead, she said the country prepared itself for such a crisis in the aftermath of the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. She said the country’s leadership (including a central command system), a national policy, and “very, very strict, effective quarantine and contact tracing” protocols helped to prevent the disease from spreading within the country.
The WHO statement also said that “[t]here is limited information on possible effect of inhaled steroids and there is no evidence there is any advantage to use this route of administration to improve patient outcomes.” (Emphasis is theirs.)
“Evidence from randomized clinical trials such as RECOVERY suggests that systemic corticosteroids,” either orally or by injection, “provide benefits for reducing mortality in severe and severely ill patients requiring respiratory assistance,” he noted. “In addition, knowledge implies [that] there are no advantages of systemic corticosteroids in patients who do not require more oxygen.”
Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security who studies infectious diseases, also said in an email that “[t]here is no definitive evidence to support the use of inhaled corticosteroids like budesonide in the treatment of COVID-19. While there is biological plausibility that such a treatment could have a beneficial role it can only be determined in a proper clinical trial.”
Adalja cautioned that “[w]hen it comes to steroid treatments for COVID19 it is important to realize that, as was shown with systemic steroid treatment, there is an appropriate and inappropriate time to administer them.” He also said “inhaled corticosteroids are not benign and have a range of side effects that range from osteoporosis to making one more vulnerable to bacterial pneumonia so I would not advise the use of such treatments for COVID19 outside of a clinical trial or protocol (though those prescribed them for other reasons should continue taking them).”
In a later interview with the conservative One America News Network, Bartlett said that a Texas hospital south of San Antonio, Frio Regional Hospital, had “emptied” its COVID-19 patient intensive care unit inhaled from budesonide.
The hospital’s CEO, John Hughson, told FactCheck.org in a phone interview that the hospital, which has a capacity of 25 beds, used inhaled budesonide in three patients in a room that was switched to an intensive care unit, and that they stepped forward several days later and were released. He said he believed inhaled budesonide might be effective for some patients and that while some doctors in the hospital use it, others did not.
Hughson noted that “it’s a very, very small pattern and all those patients received oxygen at high speed.”
“It is at the discretion of the doctor and his medical judgment … if therapy begins,” he said. “I would also say that this is not the only remedy we use.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s right for each and every patient, it’s not the magic cure for each and every one, and it wouldn’t possibly prevent everyone from getting the disease,” he added.
At this point, Bartlett also advised, in his previous interview, that a vaccine is not the case if inhaled budesonide is widely used. For example, after making the unfounded claim related to Taiwan’s widespread adoption of steroids, he said: “Taiwan, 24 million other people, do not want to wait for a vaccine, have no challenge in vaccinating 24 million other people. Other people stop. “
Adalja, however, said that “no treatment will obviate the need for a vaccine — a vaccine is the only way to remove this virus as a threat to human health.”
And Cheng, who said she has spoken recently with both Taiwan’s former health minister and the current health minister, dismissed the suggestion that the country isn’t in need of a vaccine. She said Taiwan is putting many resources into vaccine development and negotiating with vaccine manufacturers to ensure that, when one is ready, the country can procure enough doses to begin with protecting health care workers — followed by the rest of the population.
Editor’s Note: FactCheck.org is one of many organizations running with Facebook to demystify incorrect information shared on social media. Our past can be discovered here.
A dalja, Amesh. Principal Investigator, Johns Hopkins University Health Safety Center. Email FactCheck.org. July 29, 2020.
Barnes, Peter. Professor of Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, London. Email FactCheck.org. July 28, 2020.
Bafadhel, Mona. Associate Professor of Respiratory Medicine, University of Oxford. Email FactCheck.org. July 29, 2020.
Bafadhel, Mona and Dan V. Nicolau. “Corticosteroids inhaled in viral pandemics: a remedy for COVID-19?” Lancet respiratory medicine. July 30, 2020.
“Budesonide and COVID-19.” American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. 19 Jul 2020.
“Budesonide (Inhalation Route).” Mayo Clinic. 1 Jul 2020.
Cheng, Tsung-Mei. Health policy research analyst, Princeton University. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 4 Aug 2020.
“COVID-19 Dashboard.” Center for Systems Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. Accessed 3 Aug 2020.
Edgin, Alana. “Odessa man drops from Congressional run due to other ‘like-minded’ candidate.” GoSanAngelo.com. 27 Sep 2019.
Grayson, Mitchell. Professor of pediatrics and chief of the division of allergy and immunology, Nationwide Children’s Hospital at Ohio State University College of Medicine. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 30 Jul 2020.
Hughson, John. CEO, Frio Regional Hospital. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. August 4, 2020.
“Down with the myths.” World Health Organization. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
RECOVERY Collaborative Group. “Dexamethasone in Hospitalized Patients with Covid-19 — Preliminary Report.” New England Journal of Medicine. 17 Jul 2020.
World Health Organization. Email to FactCheck.org. July 31, 2020.
Q: Do hospitals inflate the number and deaths of COVID-19 to be paid more?
A: Recent law will pay hospitals the highest Medicare rates for patients and COVID-19 treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reports.