Researchers have found that Ivermectin — an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug — was able to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from growing in cell cultures.
A team of Australian researchers at Monash University in Melbourne have found that Ivermectin — an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug that has been used to effectively fight viruses including HIV, Influenza, and Zika — was able to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from growing in cell cultures.

While promising, the drug has yet to be shown to have the same effect inside the human body, because the Australian research was conducted “in vitro,” meaning it was in a Petri dish at a lab. The researchers are still trying to nail down funding for pre-clinical testing and clinical trials, after which they’d have to start the long approval process for the trials themselves.

The results, though, are promising. In just 48 hours, the scientists say, all genetic material of the virus was eradicated.

“We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours there was a really significant reduction in it,” Kylie Wagstaff, lead researcher and co-author of the study published today in Antiviral Research, said in a statement.