© 2024 WYPR
WYPR 88.1 FM Baltimore WYPF 88.1 FM Frederick WYPO 106.9 FM Ocean City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Could Polio Vaccine Corral Covid-19?

Ferd Kaufman/Associated Press

A safe, effective vaccine against Covid-19 could resurrect jobs, send kids back to classrooms--change our lives. But how safe and effective? And how quickly can we have it? Dr. Robert Gallo, the AIDS-research pioneer now leading virus science at the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Global Virus Network, argues we could get much of the benefit by inoculating people with an old, very cheap drug -- the oral Polio vaccine developed seven decades ago. Gallo contends it would trigger our ‘innate immunity’-- the body’s emergency response when a threat shows up.

For more reading on polio vaccine potential, visit this link.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'