Last Updated on January 19, 2023 by Neelam Singh
Quick Take
A video on social media claims remdesivir is killing people. We fact-checked and found the claim to be Mostly False.
The Claim
A video on Instagram claims remdesivir is killing people. The video has received 24,471 likes till we last checked.
A screenshot is given below:
Fact Check
What is remdesivir?
Remdesivir is an anti-viral medication sold under the brand name Veklury. It is administered into the vein through injection.
Remdesivir was developed to treat hepatitis C and eventually investigated for Ebola virus and Marburg virus.
In 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized remdesivir for emergency use to treat Covid-19 in hospitals. Since its approval, the FDA has expanded the use of remdesivir to high-risk, non-hospitalized patients.
The drug’s approval came after data from three randomized clinical trials conducted by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found that remdesivir decreased the recovery time of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Is remdesivir killing people?
Not enough evidence. We do not have evidence that shows remdesivir has increased the cases of deaths.
We searched and found that the speaker in the claimed video is Nicole Sirotek. She is the executive editor and founder of American Frontline Nurses. Sirotek has even pinned the claimed video to her Twitter account.
In the claimed video, Sirotek has not given any scientific evidence to prove that remdesivir is killing people.
The video talks about a child who seemed to have some kind of brain surgery. But the video does not relate the child’s condition with Covid or remdesivir. In the end, the video shows an on-screen text that says ‘Remdesivir and Veklury are poison’. The claimant Sirotek has not provided any evidence to support the claim made on the video.
Dr. Andre Kalil, an epidemiologist and a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the USA has explained that remdesivir is safe and beneficial for the treatment of covid-19 infection.
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