“I will look into the health ministry’s findings and see where to go from there,” Leong, who had raised the matter in Parliament, said.
The Selayang MP said that he had been “told by people the drug works”.
“People have told me there are reports of hospitalised Covid-19 patients from Malaysia and overseas who used Ivermectin and recovered,” he told FMT.
At the Dewan Rakyat sitting on July 27, Leong had joined fellow Pakatan Harapan MPs Mohamad Sabu (Kota Raja), Khalid Samad (Shah Alam), Sivarasa Rasiah (Sungai Buloh), Johari Abdul (Sungai Petani) and Sim Tze Tzin (Bayan Baru) in calling on then health minister Dr Adham Baba to allow the use of Ivermectin by Covid-19 patients.
But netizens and medical practitioners said there had not been enough data on the use of the drug for such patients.
Earlier today, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the ministry did not recommend using Ivermectin to treat Covid-19 patients, following its treatment effectiveness test (I-test study) on high-risk patients.
In a statement, he said the study found that Ivermectin yielded no significant differences in ICU admissions, mechanical ventilation, symptom recovery, blood parameters and chest X-ray resolution.
“The main aim of the I-tech study was to see if Ivermectin administered during the first week of illness prevented deterioration to Stage 4 or 5 hospitalised patients aged 50 years and above with at least one comorbidity,” he said.
It found that patients in both groups had a similar rate of progression to severe Covid-19 symptoms.
“For the same primary outcome, the mean time to progression was 3.0 days for the Ivermectin group compared to 2.9 days for the standard care group, but the difference was not statistically significant.
“Additionally, safety analysis found that three times more adverse events were reported in the Ivermectin group versus the standard care group, most commonly diarrhoea.
“Meanwhile, there was a trend of 28-day mortality reduction by Ivermectin with standard care, but not reaching statistical significance,” he said.
Noor Hisham reiterated that the ministry’s findings were supported by other recent large studies conducted in Argentina and Brazil, and warned medical practitioners against recommending, illegally advertising or selling the drug to treat Covid-19.