Mayor of Itajaí Suggests Rectal Ozone Therapy for Covid

The mayor of Itajai (SC), Volnei Morastoni (MDB), said on Monday (3) that the city will offer, ozone therapy, another treatment with no proven effectiveness, to patients with Covid-19. The municipality already provides ivermectin and camphor as preventive options and the antibiotic azithromycin as a treatment for infected patients. According to the mayor, who is also a doctor, ozone should be applied through the anus of patients diagnosed and with symptoms of infection with the novel coronavirus, a few minutes a day, in different sessions. The statement was broadcast on a social media live from the city hall. "It is a simple, fast application of two, three minutes a day. It will probably be a rectal application, which is very easy, very fast, [with] a thin catheter and this gives an excellent result, [...] it helps a lot in positive cases of coronavirus," he said. Morastoni also claimed to have registered the city with the National Research Ethics Commission, an organ linked to the Ministry of Health, to be part of a study protocol on the use of ozone to treat Covid-19. A researcher at USP's Institute of Biomedical Sciences, microbiologist Natalia Pasternak stated that ozone therapy is a "quackery that is said to cure cancer", without any medical-scientific evidence.