Children’s TB jab may help adults fight coronavirus

A JAB usually given to protect children from tuberculosis could buy time to find an effective coronavirus vaccine, according to researchers.

The Bacillus Calmette-guerin vaccine will be tested globally on 10,000 people after the injection was found to stimulate the immune system.

It would not be the ultimate solution but would instead help people fight off coronavirus until more effective vaccines are discovered.

The University of Exeter is leading the UK arm of the trial and will soon recruit healthcare staff and care home workers in the UK.

The study is coordinated by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

It has received more than $10 million (£7.6 million) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to allow its global expansion.

The Peter Sowerby Foundation has contributed funding to support the Exeter trial site.

The UK joins study centres in Australia, the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil in the largest trial of its kind.

Participants will be given either the BCG vaccine, which is currently given to more than 100 million babies worldwide each year to protect against tuberculosis, or a placebo injection. In the UK, routine BCG vaccination was stopped in 2005 because of low rates of TB in the general population.

“This could be of major importance globally,” Prof John Campbell, of the University of Exeter Medical School, told the BBC.

“Whilst we don’t think it will be specific to Covid, it has the potential to buy several years of time for the Covid vaccines to come through and perhaps other treatments to be developed.”

Previous studies suggest that the vaccine could reduce susceptibility to a range of infections caused by viruses including those similar to the novel coronavirus causing Covid-19.

Trials in South Africa linked the vaccine to a 73 per cent reduction in infections in the nose, throat and lungs while experiments in the Netherlands showed it reduced the amount of yellow fever virus in the body.

Examining the mechanism by which this may work is part of the trial being conducted by the researchers.

The vaccine boosts immunity by “training” the i mmune system to respond to other subsequent infections with greater intensity.

Researchers hope this improved “innate immunity” will buy crucial time to develop an effective and safe vaccine against Covid-19.