A British COVID-19 patient was reportedly just three days away from being pulled off the ventilator when nurses decided to give her the erectile dysfunction (ED) medicine, Viagra, in a last-ditch effort to try and save her life. The plan worked, and within 48 hours, Monica Almeida’s prognosis improved as the ED pill opened her blood vessels and increased oxygen flow. After a week, she was able to head home for Christmas.
According to the Lincolnite, Almeida is a 37-year-old mother of two. She became sick with COVID-19 in October despite having received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. “By day four the mother-of-two had lost her sense of taste and smell before coughing up blood the next day. On the fifth day her oxygen levels had dropped,” Lincolnite reported.
That’s when she first decided to go to the hospital, but was discharged with a prescription and no treatment after initially being taken there in an ambulance.
Within hours of being home, Almeida had to be rushed back to the hospital due to low oxygen levels and she was taken to the intensive care unit.
By mid-November, doctors had placed Almeida on the ventilator and believed she was going to die:
She stayed on the COVID ward overnight but her condition deteriorated and she was admitted to ICU on November 9. Monica was then put into a coma on November 16 as her condition continued to get worse and her oxygen levels were not reaching normal. She can’t remember much from being in the coma other than hallucinating. Before she was put to sleep, she signed a document saying she was happy to be in a study to try experimental drugs. She was also given Viagra around a week after being in a coma, which opened up her airways. Her lungs started responding to it and the oxygen she needed lowered by around 50% as her condition began to improve.
“It was definitely the Viagra that saved me. Within 48 hours it opened up my airwaves and my lungs started to respond. If you think how the drug works, it expands your blood vessels,” she told The U.S. Sun. “I have asthma and my air sacks needed a little help.”
Almeida still says she believes that being vaccinated helped with her COVID-19 prognosis as well, and encouraged others to get the vaccine:
“There are people out there saying the vaccine has killed people,” she told the media. “I’m not denying there are people who react and get poorly with the vaccine, but when we look at the amount of deaths we have in unvaccinated people there is a big message there to have your jab.”
“It does worry me, especially in Lincolnshire, that people are against having the vaccine,” Almeida continued. “I never expected at 37 years of age to get as ill as I did. I never thought this would happen to me and I want people to take it more seriously.”
Viagra has been studied by other scientists for its potential in helping COVID-19 patients. British citizens are allowed to take the ED medicine for the coronavirus so long as they sign a waiver allowing “experimental treatment.”
Viagra is also being studied for another potentially fatal disease – Alzheimer’s. According to Fox 13, “a new study shows that drugs commonly used to treat erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra, may reduce a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by up to two-thirds. “