A 100-year old TB vaccine to boost immunity and fight against Coronavirus

What should be the exact vaccine against Coronavirus? Thousands of Researchers are carrying on experiments globally, to achieve recovery against the great pandemic of 2020.

Researchers at Utrecht University and the university medical center, Radboud University of Nijmegen are looking into the matter of applying TB Vaccine to medical staff to know whether the century-old BCG Vaccine would protect those staff against novel Coronavirus.

According to previous study, the BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin) has the power to provide protection against the flu. However, researchers are still in doubt regarding whether it would work against infections caused by Coronavirus. Researchers in four countries are willing to begin a clinical trial of a conventional approach to the Coronavirus, which is causing pandemic around the world.

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The experiment is going to be done in nurses and physicians who have challenged their lives to serve Coronavirus affected patients around them and are therefore at high risk of being infected with respiratory disorders and diseases than the rest of the population. Elderly people who have major chances of being infected with the new Coronavirus are also part of this BCG Vaccine experiment. A team that is going to kick-off the first trial this week is selecting 1000 healthcare workers in eight Dutch hospitals.  The healthcare workers will receive either a placebo or BCG. 

BCG Vaccine is given to children for preventing TB cases with a live and weakened strain of Mycobacterium bovis that belongs to the same species with M. tuberculosis, the microbe responsible for causing TB. According to observational and clinical studies of Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, Danish researchers BCG may enhance the immune system by increasing its ability to fight against pathogens other than TB bacterium. 

The Danish researchers have opined that BCG can prevent about 30% of infections with any category of unknown pathogens including viruses, in the first year after it’s given. 

Utrecht University has come forward to work with HarbourBioMed, a biotech company and Rotterdam’s Erasmus MC for developing an antibody that can be helpful in slowing down the fatal consequences caused by Coronavirus. If the mission of applying BCG Vaccine to the 1000 medical staff becomes successful and proves to provide extra protection, the other employees will also be brought under the same experiment as confirmed by a professor from Utrecht medical center.

Bonten, one of the workers have mentioned that they are going to take part in this experiment enthusiastically. Everyone is looking forward to new hope that BCG Vaccination experiment will help people to fight against Coronavirus.