Galway’s first COVID-19 cases – as NUIG breakthrough aims to slow its spread

Scientists at NUIG believe that it may have the first defence against the spread of COVID-19 – as the first cases of the highly contagious and deadly virus were confirmed.

At least four cases of the Coronavirus were confirmed in Kinvara; Cllr Joe Byrne told this week’s Loughrea Municipal District meeting that one of the cases was living 400 yards from his home, with another a mile away.

“That’s how close it is to me,” he revealed.

But as the county braced itself for an upsurge in numbers – and as a host of public gatherings were cancelled – an NUIG start-up company Aquila Bioscience, believes it has invented new anti-biological wipes that could halt its spread.

Professor Lokesh Joshi, Vice-President for Research at NUIG, and founder of Aquila Bioscience, which employs three people on campus, said that international agencies have been ‘wowed’ by the ABwipe technology.

“The original intention of developing this wipe was to protect these people from biological threat agents, such as anthrax and ricin,” he said.

“Then the whole coronavirus thing came up and we had already shown that it was effective against influenza virus, which was a pandemic in 2009 and 2010. So, we’ve looked at the structures of coronavirus, we know what is in our wipes and we know it works or would work on coronavirus as well,” he added.

See full coverage in this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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