No hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin in Trump's COVID-19 vaccine | Fact check

Chris Mueller, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: Donald Trump got a COVID-19 vaccine containing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin

A June 4 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a list of ingredients that includes hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin below a bold header that reads "President Trump's Vaccine."

The post's caption reads, "Wake-up people! Trump is clean! Here was his healthy cocktail! B4 Pharma screwed it up! Trump didn't know they had deadly ingredients in Pharmas jab & had no say either what ingredients were in! But he always spoke of the healthy treatment & didn't mandate it."

The post was liked nearly 100 times in four days. A similar post on Twitter was retweeted more than 1,200 times.

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Our rating: False

Former President Donald Trump said he received Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, which doesn't contain any of the ingredients listed in the post. Multiple health agencies say the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are not recommended to prevent or treat COVID-19.

In 2021 interview, Trump said he received Pfizer vaccine

Trump quietly received the COVID-19 vaccine in January 2021, shortly before he left the White House, as USA TODAY previously reported. At the time, Trump's aides declined to reveal what type of vaccine he received.

However, in an interview with Yahoo Finance in October 2021, Trump said he received Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.

"I got the Pfizer and I would have been very happy with any of them," he said.

A fact sheet on the Food and Drug Administration’s website lists the ingredients in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. It doesn't list hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin or any other item named in the Instagram post.

An overview of the COVID-19 vaccines on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website says they contain "no medicines or therapeutics, such as ivermectin or any other medications."

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The FDA's website says ivermectin, a medication used to treat some parasitic diseases, should not be used to treat or prevent COVID-19. The website also states the drug hasn't been shown to be safe or effective for that purpose. It is typically administered in the form of a tablet, not a vaccine.

The treatment guidelines published by the National Institutes of Health also recommend against using ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

Similarly, the World Health Organization doesn't recommend using hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, to prevent or treat COVID-19. Based on trials involving thousands of patients, the WHO found it "had little or no effect on preventing illness, hospitalization or death" and "did not reduce mortality."

An article in The Lancet, a medical journal, describes a study involving more than 1,300 patients that, "like dozens of smaller trials published before," found hydroxychloroquine had no benefit in preventing COVID-19 from progressing in patients with initially mild symptoms.

"Ultimately, hydroxychloroquine did not have clinical benefit for COVID-19," the article says.

The Instagram user could not be reached for comment.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump got Pfizer COVID vaccine, not ivermectin mix | Fact check