Vitamin D: Can the sunshine vitamin help to put Covid in the shade? 

Vitamin D helps our immune system to battle viral and other respiratory infections. So should we all be taking it as a supplement? Sharon Ní Chonchúir finds out

Age, ethnicity, and obesity are all factors that have previously been associated with low levels of vitamin D. Picture: iStock

What would you do if you realised there was a cheap and widely available vitamin that might have the potential to protect us against becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 and help us to fight the virus?

This is a question that Dr Daniel McCartney, a lecturer in human nutrition and dietetics at the Technological University of Dublin, asked himself last year. His answer was to form the Covit-D Consortium with eight fellow medical professionals and academics from different specialist disciplines including respiratory medicine, immunology, geriatric medicine, endocrinology, biochemistry, molecular medicine, public health and nutrition and dietetics.