Will century-old vaccine for tuberculosis prove to be a weapon against coronavirus?

• About 4,000 employees of Australian hospitals will participate in the trial.
• After three months, the monitoring committee will review the results to see if it is working.

A shot of bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is being given to healthcare workers in Melbourne and Netherlands to see if it will protect them against coronavirus.

BCG, a vaccine for tuberculosis (TB) has been widely used for about 100 years and is given to more than a million children a year in countries with TB. It also offers broad protection to respiratory infections. According to a report, this vaccine could protect healthcare workers from the deadly coronavirus.

The World Health Organization is encouraging international groups to collaborate with a study led by Nigel Curtis. Curtis is the head of infectious diseases research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.

"It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way," Bloomberg quoted Curtis.

Researchers there are working to enroll 4,000 healthcare workers from hospitals around Australia in one study. Half the participants will take the vaccine, which has few side effects, while the other half will take a placebo.

Blood samples taken at the start and end of the trial will determine who was infected with the coronavirus. The participants will log any symptoms during the trial period. After three months, the monitoring committee will review the results to see if it is working.

Similarly, a team in the Netherlands has also kicked off the first of the trials this week. They have recruited 1000 health care workers in eight Dutch hospitals who will receive the vaccine.

A separate large-scale study is also planned at several hospitals in Germany, the UK and Greece.