The ‘Chloroquine Brothers’ behind government-backed trials on unproven Covid drugs

While the scientific community has long dismissed any claims of efficacy in the use of chloroquine, azithromycin, and ivermectin to treat Covid-19, private health services with over 7 million clients in Brazil continue to prescribe this unproven cocktail of “early coronavirus treatment” to patients in South America’s largest country.

According to investigations from the Senate’s Covid inquiry, Hapvida — the largest HMO in Brazil’s Northeast — and elderly care firm Prevent Senior have adopted a deliberate protocol to distribute “early treatment” kits to any patient displaying Covid-19 symptoms, even before taking diagnostic tests.

Patients from both HMOs are sent home with a bag of medication in tow, and doctors have often been instructed not to tell citizens exactly which drugs they have been prescribed. Professionals who refused to follow the protocol were put under pressure and, in some cases, lost their jobs. 

Last week, TV news station Globonews reported that Prevent Senior covered up Covid-19 deaths which occurred as part of a government-backed chloroquine study.

The Brazilian Report learns that these experiments were led by a family of doctors, who as of yet have remained under the radar of the Senate’s Covid inquiry.

Cardiovascular surgeon Anderson Nascimento was in charge of Hapvida at the time the company decided it would prescribe chloroquine to any patient arriving at one of its health units.

During a videoconference with Mayra Pinheiro — the former Labor-Management Secretary of the Health Ministry and nicknamed “Captain Chloroquine” for her staunch support of using the drug to treat Covid-19 — Mr. Nascimento explained that the Hapvida board chose to distribute chloroquine kits free of charge in the early months of the pandemic. By July 2020, when the meeting took place, the HMO had already dishes...