Vladimir Zelenko

Vladimir Zelenko, a self-described “simple country doctor” from upstate New York who rocketed to prominence in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when his controversial treatment for the coronavirus gained White House support, died on Thursday June 30 2022 in Dallas. He was 48. His wife, Rinat Zelenko, said he died of lung cancer at a hospital where he was receiving treatment. Until early 2020, Dr. Zelenko, who was also known by his Hebrew name, Zev, spent his days caring for patients in and around Kiryas Joel, a village of about 35,000 Hasidic Jews roughly an hour northwest of New York City. He graduated from Hofstra in 1995 with a degree in chemistry, and he received his medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2000. He was not the first physician to promote hydroxychloroquine. But he began to draw national attention on March 21 2020 — two days after President Donald J. Trump first mentioned the drug in a press briefing — when Dr. Zelenko posted a video to YouTube and Facebook in which he claimed a 100 percent success rate with the treatment. He implored Mr. Trump to adopt it. Over the next few months, researchers cast further doubt on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. That same month, Dr. Zelenko announced in a video that he was closing his practice and leaving the Kiryas Joel community. He founded a company, Zelenko Labs, to promote other nonconventional treatments for the disease, including vitamins and quercetin, an anti-inflammatory drug. Zelenko’s first marriage ended in divorce. Along with his second wife, he is survived by their two children, Shira and Liba; six children from his first marriage, Levi Yitzchok, Esther Tova, Eta Devorah, Nochum Dovid, Shmuel Nosson Yaakov and Menachem Mendel; his parents; and a brother, Ephraim.