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 The northern state, which is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's
Bharatiya Janata Party, said this week it would hand out Coronil to
COVID-19 patients. The ayurvedic medicine was launched by yoga guru
Baba Ramdev's company Patanjali Ayurved last year to much fanfare as
a COVID-19 cure.
The government later said the consumer goods company co-founded by
Ramdev could not market the drug as a cure, and it needed to market
it as an immunity booster.
There is no scientific basis to Coronil's use in treating COVID-19
patients, said Ajay Khanna, the state secretary of the Indian
Medical Association (IMA) in Uttarakhand, where Patanjali is
headquartered.
"If the Haryana government is doing this, then it is their loss," he
told Reuters in a telephone interview, referring to the state's
distribution of the remedy.
The Uttarakhand unit of IMA filed a lawsuit against the yoga guru,
asking him to write an apology for his recent statement that
science-based treatments had caused the deaths of thousands of
COVID-19 patients.
The comment drew the ire of doctors across the country and Ramdev,
who has a large following in India, withdrew his remarks on Sunday.
"He is more of a businessman than anything else. To sell his
product, he has sparked a fight between allopathic medicine and
ayurveda," Khanna said.
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 Ayurveda is an ancient Indian system that
includes medicines, meditation, exercise and
dietary guidelines practiced by millions of
adherents.
The outcry over the remedy and the guru's
comments comes weeks after Indian doctors warned
against the practice of smearing cow dung on the
body in the belief it will ward off COVID-19,
saying there was no scientific evidence of its
effectiveness and it risked spreading other
diseases.
India's has had 27.16 million cases of the
coronavirus and 311,388 deaths, according to
health ministry data, and a devastating second
wave of infections is sweeping many parts of the
country.
Traditional medicine is popular with many
people, partly because of a lack of access to
healthcare, but doctors have warned of the
danger of people putting their trust in
alternative treatments for COVID-19.
"You lower your guard thinking you're protected
in some way, but I think real harm can be caused
by giving people a false sense of security,"
said Lancelot Pinto, a consultant pulmonologist
at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai.
(This story has been refiled to correct spelling
of Janata in paragraph two)
(Reporting by Manas Mishra and Aishwarya Nair;
Editing by Robert Birsel)
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