Acharya Balkrishna, the chief executive officer of Yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved, on Tuesday said that the company never claimed that its new medicines could cure the coronavirus, ANI reported. Ramdev had, however, claimed last month that Patanjali’s medicines showed 100% favourable results during clinical trials on patients.
“We [Patanjali] said that we had made medicines and used them in clinical controlled trials which cured corona patients,” Balkrishna was quoted as saying by ANI. “There is no confusion in it.”
Ramdev had claimed that Coronil and Swasari – the two “medicines” prepared by his company – were tried on coronavirus patients at Patanjali Yogpeeth in Haridwar after necessary approval from the authorities.
His claims about the successful trial of Patanjali medicines on June 23 came hours after the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy had asked the company to stop advertising its concoctions as a coronavirus cure.
Uttarakhand’s Ayurved department had claimed that Patanjali never disclosed that its new medicine kit was meant for coronavirus treatment when it applied for a license. An officer from the department said that Patanjali sought a license for an “immunity booster and a cough and fever cure”. The Uttarakhand government had said it would send a notice to Ramdev’s company.
On Friday, the Jaipur police filed a first information report against Ramdev, Balkrishna and three others for making misleading claims about finding a cure for the coronavirus.
The AYUSH Ministry had said last month that it would look into the report sent by Ramdev’s company and then decide whether or not to give approval for the medicines.
‘“It is a good thing that Baba Ramdev has given a new medicine to the country but as per rules, it has to come to the Ayush Ministry first,” Minister of State for the Ministry of AYUSH Shripad Naik had said. “Everyone has to send details of the research to the AYUSH ministry for confirmation. This is the rule and no one can advertise their products without it.”
