The vaccine which has been approved by the FDA has been used to effectively combat other viruses such as HIV, Influenza, and Zika and was able to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from growing in cell cultures.

The researchers, however, urged people not to raise their hopes too much as they continue to test the vaccine in various experiments to make sure it is effective and becomes the cure for this novel virus though the various tests conducted are promising.

“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 statemen

“Ivermectin is very widely used and seen as a safe drug, we need to figure out now whether the dosage you can use it at in humans will be effective — that’s the next step,” he added

“As the virologist who was part of the team who were first to isolate and share SARS-COV2 outside of China in January 2020, I am excited about the prospect of Ivermectin being used as a potential drug against COVID-19,”  Leon Caly, a senior medical scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at the Doherty Institute, said.

“In times when we’re having a global pandemic and there isn’t an approved treatment, if we had a compound that was already available around the world then that might help people sooner, realistically it’s going to be a while before a vaccine is broadly available,” Wagstaff said in a statement.