Zinc, homeopathy, ivermectin, vitamin C… Pseudo-medicine is in the spotlight in a “anti-covid protocol“which has been circulating on the internet for a few days. So much so that the National Council of the Order (Cname) “wrote to the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) and the Medicines Agency (ANSM) to ask them to verify the compliance of this protocol with the data acquired from sciencee “, a spokesperson for the Council told AFP on February 11.

The alert was first given on Twitter earlier this month, where several doctors called the protocol “criminal“.

Advice from a head of infectious disease clinic, if you want to reduce your risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19 and not suffer from potentially serious side effects, do not follow this madness

This document is criminal, there are no other words pic.twitter.com/JzfDkGzwyE

– Nathan Peiffer-Smadja (@nathanpsmad) February 2, 2021

No proven efficacy

This “therapeutic proposal to treat covid-19 in the early phase“emanates from”Free Health Coordination“, which claims to represent 30,000 doctors. The protocol is presented in the form of tables broken down according to the severity of the disease.

Problem: the substances or techniques mentioned, such as sophrology, zinc, vitamins C and D, homeopathy, ivermectin or even hydroxycholoroquine, have never scientifically proven their effectiveness, neither preventive nor curative, against covid. Only a corticosteroid cited among the various substances is now recommended “in patients with severe or critical form“by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Read also: No, wine does not protect against covid

Dangerous associations

Worse, the protocol proposes “contraindicated and therefore dangerous drug combinations“, according to the collective of doctors No Fake Med, which fights against medical disinformation.

“Certain treatments can be toxic, and their ineffectiveness on SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to delayed treatment and are likely to worsen the prognosis of this potentially fatal pathology.“worries the collective.

“Endangering the life of others”

For these doctors, “the presentation of a therapeutic protocol in the absence of evidence of efficacy and of a positive benefit-risk ratio demonstrated in patients constitutes a danger to the life of others“.

Cautious, the authors of the protocol state to date that it is not “no prescriptions or recommendations, but feedback from field experiences from the doctors of the Free Health Coordination” and “it cannot be taken or advised in self-medication“.