US scientists believe they have made a breakthrough after they injected monkeys with a form of coronavirus just to see what happens.

However, the test on the rhesus macaque monkeys may have come up with a vaccine that heavily reduced the spread of a strain of coronavirus.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists at NIAID's Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, jabbed the luckier groups of monkeys with experimental antiviral "wonderdrug" remdesivir after or before infecting all of them with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

They found that after six days the vaccinated ones were fine, the treated ones were ok and the untreated ones were suffering the full-blown symptoms.

They are now hopeful that they can trial the drug with the COVID-19 (Wuhan) epidemic strain, which is part of the same family of viruses and has the same symptoms.

Remdesivir is also being trialed in China and some patients with the disease have already been trying it in a desperate bid to recover.

Things are looking promising, however, scientists still need to go through human trials to be sure that the drug works before mass production can begin.

What happened in the trial?

The work involved three groups of animals:

The scientists observed the animals for six days.

Findings

All control animals showed signs of respiratory disease.

Animals treated before infection (vaccinated) fared well: no signs of respiratory disease, significantly lower levels of virus replication in the lungs compared to control animals, and no lung damage.

Animals treated after infection fared significantly better than the control animals: disease was less severe than in control animals, their lungs had lower levels of virus than the control animals, and the damage to the lungs was less severe.

An NIH spokesman said:"Remdesivir has previously protected animals against a variety of viruses in lab experiments. The drug has been shown experimentally to effectively treat monkeys infected with Ebola and Nipah viruses.

"The scientists indicate that the promising study results support additional clinical trials of remdesivir for MERS-CoV and 2019-nCoV.

"At least two clinical trials of remdesivir for 2019-nCoV are under way in China, and other patients with 2019-nCoV infection have received the drug under a compassionate use protocol."

Coronavirus has so far killed almost 2500 people and infected around 79,000 world wide.

The Venice Carnival and Giorgio Armanis Milan fashion show were shut down today after the deadly bug killed three people in Italy and 50,000 people were quarantined.

There has been a lot of backlash against the use of monkeys in research.

The UK's RSPCA estimates thousands of monkeys, mainly macaques and marmosets, are used in research and testing.

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PeTA believes that over 106,000 primates are currently used in lab reasearch in the US.

The RSPCA said: "In the UK alone, around 3,000 monkeys are used annually.

"Much of this use is to develop and test the safety and effectiveness of potential human medicines and vaccines. Primates are also used for studying how the brain functions and in research relating to human reproduction."

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Lab monkeys infected with coronavirus in race to find life-saving vaccine to stop the deadly outbreak - The Sun