Desperate for Covid Care, Undocumented Immigrants Resort to Unproven Drugs

Shut out from mainstream medicine, some immigrants are buying expensive, unproven Covid therapies from “wellness” clinics or turning to the black market.

FRESNO, Calif. — On a Tuesday afternoon in April, among tables of vegetables, clothes and telephone chargers at Fresno’s biggest outdoor flea market were prescription drugs being sold as treatments for Covid. Vendors sold $25 injections of the steroid dexamethasone, several kinds of antibiotics and the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drugs pushed by President Donald J. Trump last year — make regular appearances at the market as well, as do sham herbal supplements. Health and consumer protection agencies have repeatedly warned that several of these treatments, as well as vitamin infusions and expensive injections of “peptide therapies” sold at alternative wellness clinics for more than $1,000, are not supported by reliable scientific evidence.