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To date, there is no effective prophylactic agent to prevent COVID-19. However, the development of symptoms similar to covid19 could be prevented with an aqueous solution of chlorine dioxide (ClO2). This retrospective study evaluated the effectiveness of an aqueous solution of ClO2 (CDS) as a prophylactic agent in 1,163 family members living with positive/suspected COVID19 patients. Prophylactic treatment consisted of 0.0003% chlorine dioxide solution (CDS) orally for at least fourteen days. Family members in whom no reports of the development of covid19-like symptoms were found in the medical history were considered successful cases. The efficacy of CDS in preventing covid19-like symptoms was 90.4% (1,051 of 1,163 relatives did not report any symptoms). The comorbidities, sex and severity of the illness of the sick patient did not contribute to the development of symptoms similar to covid19 (P = 0.092, P = 0.351 and P = 0.574, respectively). However, older relatives were more likely to develop covid19-like symptoms (ORa = 4.22, P = 0.002). There was no evidence of alterations in blood parameters or in the QTc interval in relatives who consumed CDS. The recent findings regarding Chlorine Dioxide justify designing clinical trials to assess its efficacy for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection.&nbsp

BackgroundThe need for safe and effective antiviral treatments is pressing given the number of viral infections that are prevalent in animal and human populations, often causing devastating economic losses and mortality. Informal accounts of anecdotal use of chlorine dioxide (ClO2), a well-known disinfectant and antiseptic, in COVID-19 patients has raised concern about potential toxicity, but also raises the question that ClO2 might elicit antiviral effects, a possibility that has never been examined in vivo in any animal model. Here, we challenged the hypothesis that ClO2 decreases the viral load and virus-induced mortality in a vertebrate model. For this, we determined viral load, virus-induced lesions and mortality in 10-day old chick embryos inoculated with 104 mean EID50/mL of attenuated Massachusetts and Connecticut avian coronavirus (IBV) strains.ResultsThe ClO2 treatment had a marked impact on IBV infection. Namely, viral titres were 2.4-fold lower and mortality was reduced by half in infected embryos that were treated with ClO2. Infection led to developmental abnormalities regardless of treatment. Lesions typical of IBV infections were observed in all inoculated embryos, but severity tended to be significantly lower in ClO2-treated embryos. We found no gross or microscopic evidence of toxicity caused by ClO2 at the doses used herein.ConclusionsOur study shows that ClO2 could be a safe and viable way of treating and mitigating the effects of avian coronavirus infections, and raises the possibility that similar effects could be observed in other organisms.Graphical abstract