BCG Vaccine may Help Protect Against COVID-19: UK Clinical Trial

Widely-used Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine has been launched as part of a large-scale global trial to test if it could help protect people against COVID-19.

BCG vaccine was originally designed to fight tuberculosis (TB) and also offer broad protection to respiratory infections.

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‘BCG vaccine boost immunity in a generalized way, which may offer some protection against COVID-19’

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The new global trial will test the theory that the BCG vaccine may help protect against Covid-19 too.

The University of Exeter said that it is leading the UK arm of the trial, called a BCG vaccination to decrease the impact of COVID-19 in healthcare workers' (BRACE) trial.

The BRACE trial will recruit over 10,000 healthcare staff. Volunteers will be given either the BCG vaccine or a placebo injection.

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Coronaviruses infect animals, humans, and birds. Human coronaviruses, such as SARS, MERS, and 2019-nCoV cause respiratory distress and even death. The S protein is the infectious agent of the virus.

Routine BCG vaccination in the UK was stopped in 2005 because of low TB rates in the general population.

In the UK, the trial is initially seeking to recruit 1,000 volunteers who work in care homes and other community healthcare settings.

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"BCG has been shown to raise immunity in a generalized way, which may offer some protection against COVID-19," says the lead author Professor John Campbell.

Previous investigations suggest that the BCG vaccine could decrease susceptibility to a range of infections caused by viruses, including those similar to the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19.

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Source-Medindia