Researchers from Austin Health and University of Melbourne are working on a world-first trial to use intravenous zinc to fight the symptoms of coronavirus.
Dr Joseph Ischia from Austin Health, along with Dr Oneel Patel from the Department of Surgery at the University of Melbourne, will lead the trial, website reported.
Dr. Ischia, in an interview with SBS Persian program said: “This is a world first randomized trial looking at whether zinc will be effective. Now, one of the reasons that we become interested in zinc in COVID-19 crisis is because it appears to play several roles that might be important in the development of the disease. The first would be that it inhibits virus from being able to replicate itself once it gets into the body. It also seems to have an anti-inflammatory effect. We know this is an important part of COVID-19.”
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But he warns that people should avoid taking zinc supplements in order to fight coronavirus.
“One thing that we have been very careful about, one message from the trial is that we don’t want people out there to take high doses of zinc orally that they have bought from the shop. It just does not work. Before you get anywhere near the levels of zinc that we have been achieving by giving it into a drip, people become very unwell.” Dr. Ischia said.
“The great news for Australia is that the number of cases that we were expecting to see has not happened and I think this is due to the strong leadership from the governments, states and federal and our chief medical officer. These lockdown measures have been extremely effective and what that means is where we had these disaster scenarios, hospitals being overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, it has not materialized yet, and I think this is largely due to extraordinary isolation measures that we are using.”
He said the fact that the number of COVID-19 cases has not been as high as what was initially expected, would prolong the duration of time needed to finalize the trial.
“I think that is actually great news, because that means that Australia is not going to suffer the fates of New York or northern Italy, because we have learnt so much from our colleagues over there in the best way to manage this .”
