Oral polio vaccine can be effective against coronavirus: HIV co-discoverer

The vaccine has been documented to provide protection against a number of viral and bacterial infections other than poliomyelitis, including flu, said Dr Robert Gallo.

Dr Robert Gallo, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, credited as a co-discoverer of HIV, states that the oral polio vaccine (OPV) can be repurposed to treat Covid-19. In an interview with journalist and author Walter Isaacson for veteran American journalist Christiane Amanpour’s show on PBS, Dr Gallo said that the vaccine has been documented to provide protection against a number of viral and bacterial infections other than poliomyelitis, including flu.

Dr Gallo says existing live attenuated (weakened antigen) vaccines that have proven to be safe through clinical evaluation can be used; especially OPV.

Co-authored with Dr Konstantin Chumakov of the US Food and Drugs Administration (He also serves as the director of the Center for Excellence of the Global Virus Network that Dr Gallo co-founded).

Chumakov and Gallo say, apart from inducing the production of antibodies against the poliovirus, OPV activates other aspects of the immune system, including innate immunity that makes people resistant to a clutch of viral and bacterial infections. In clinical trials conducted in the 1970s during the outbreak of seasonal influenza, OPV was found to have shielded more people from seasonal influenza than some flu vaccines do.

Dr Gallo made it clear that he isn’t certain of the duration for which the innate immunity from OPV may offer protection against SARS CoV-2 but estimated that it could do so for one to two months. He spoke of the possibility of a double-blind trial of OPV as a response measure to SARS CoV-2 kicking off soon at two locations, Mt Sinai Hospital, New York, and the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland.
 

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