The state government in India’s Rajasthan is all set to file a case against popular Yoga guru Baba Ramdev for conducting a clinical trial of the medicine "Coronil" on COVID-19 patients without permission from the government and medical authorities.
Labeling Baba Ramdev's claim of having found a COVID-19 drug a fraud, Health Minister Raghu Sharma of the Congress-led Rajasthan said during these tough times, the yoga guru trying to sell the COVID-19 medicine is not good.
“As per the notification of Ministry of AYUSH, Baba Ramdev should have taken permission from the apex biomedical research body and government of Rajasthan for the trial of any COVID-19 Ayurveda medicine. But he has claimed to have carried out the trial without any permission or any criteria, which is wrong", Sharma said.
He further said the government will take legal action against him while "one of our doctors has already filed a lawsuit".
The chief medical officer of Jaipur said he is in charge of the National Institute of Medical Science and Research (NIMS) in the city and they haven’t seen any trial being conducted.
“All the patients we admitted there (NIMS), were without symptoms. There was no fever, cough, or sore throat. All such patients are cured in 7 to 10 days and patients with such symptoms were kept at another place, they were also cured in the same number of days too", the officer said.
Late on Tuesday night, the Ministry of AYUSH was told by the Patanjali Research Foundation Trust that this clinical trial was done at the National Institute of Medical Science and Research (NIMS) in Jaipur. It was claimed that the trust followed every rule, and kept the director general of the apex body for formulation, coordination, development, and promotion of research on scientific lines in Ayurveda and Sowa-Rigwa systems of medicine in the loop.
According to a research paper filed by the Patanjali company with the Ministry of AYUSH after Coronil was questioned, the clinical test of the medicine was carried out on 120 patients, most of them were asymptomatic or rarely showed any COVID-19 symptoms. The patients were aged between 15 and 80.
The Rajasthan government claims the COVID-19 reports of patients take three days at NIMS while the Yoga guru alleged that several patients who tried the medicine were cured on the same day.