Australian garlic kills COVID and flu with ‘99.9 percent efficacy,’study finds

Garlic is known to be good for killing bacteria and has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine. A worldfirst study reportedly shows certain Australian garlic varieties can kill COVID-19 and the common flu with “99.9 percent efficacy.” The new research was released last week by The Peter Doherty Institute, reported The Australian Financial Review.

Scientists at Doherty have been researching garlic properties over the past 18 months. They found that a certain Australian grown garlic variety has antiviral properties with up to 99.9 per cent efficacy against SARSCoV-2 and Influenza type A viruses.

The research involved in-vitro testing against the SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza type A viruses using garlic ingredients extracted from exclusive Australian grown garlic varieties.

“We wanted to know if these strains had the possibility of killing COVID-19,” Dr. Julie McAuley, manager of the Doherty’s high containment facility COVID-19 research lab, told The Australian Financial Review.

“I thought it might fail miserably. We blindly tested over 20 varieties. We found one of AGP’s products could reduce the infectious titre of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza by 3-log-fold (99.9 per cent). We barely detected any remaining virus genome, indicating nearly complete virucidal activity.”

Dr McAuley said the variety was tested across different sites to ensure the results were not related to the environment, nutrients, water or any other factors.

Stringent clinical trials are required to determine if the findings of this research translates from test tubes to humans, said the Doherty Institute.

Epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz added, “We won’t know if this product helps with COVID-19 or influenza until we run clinical trials in real people, rather than petri dishes in a lab.”