Category: Corona Virus Vaccine

The head of a top Russian research center told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that his lab was ready to starthuman trials of experimental coronavirus vaccines in June.

Rinat Maksyutov, head of the Vektor State Virology and Biotechnology Center, said his facility proposed first-phase clinical trials of three vaccines from June 29, on 180 volunteers.

Maksyutov was speaking during a video-link meeting between Putin and the heads of top research centers.

"Groups of volunteers have already been formed," he told Putin, adding that a lot of people wanted to take part in the trials.

"We have already received more than 300 applications."

Maksyutov said scientists at the top-secret lab complex located in Koltsovo outside the Siberian city of Novosibirsk had developed several prototype vaccines.

Tests were currently underway on mice, rabbits and other animals to determine the most promising by April 30, he said.

Vektor planned pre-clinical studies by June 22 before launching the testing in humans, Maksyutov added.

But the first human trials could begin in May "if the Health Ministry allows it."

Vektor has vaccine platform technologies that have already been tested in humans for other infections and could be used for the coronavirus, he added.

The Vektor laboratory complex conducted secret biological weapons research in the Soviet era and stockpiles viruses ranging from Ebola to smallpox.

Russiaon Tuesday reported 7,497 coronavirus cases and 58 fatalities but the real number of infections is believed to be much higher.

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Russia Ready to Start Testing Coronavirus Vaccines on Humans in June - The Moscow Times

Coronavirus is spreading around the world, but there is still no drug that can kill the virus or vaccines that can protect against it. Research is happening at breakneck speed like never before to produce a vaccine for the deadly disease. The international community has said it would take at least a year to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

According to Elissa Prichep, Precision Medicine Lead, World Economic Forum, the actual time to create coronavirus vaccine in a traditional way would take at least 10 years. However, with the advancement of technologies and international cooperation, the vaccine might be out between 12 and 18 months.

Prichep says creating a vaccine expeditiously, without appropriate testing, could put healthy people at risk. "One area of risk is vaccine enhancement, meaning the disease is more harmful to a vaccinated person," Prichep said.

Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Delhi govt to do random testing in Delhi-NCR; country's active cases at 3,981

Traditionally, a vaccine for any disease is developed in four stages. In the first phase, a study is done on healthy people to evaluate the vaccine for safety and immune response. For COVID-19 trial, this would typically take one to two years. In the second stage, a study will be done on hundreds of random people. This will further evaluate the safety, assesses the efficacy and informs optimal dose and vaccine schedule. Typically, this would take two to three years. In the third phase, another randomised, placebo-controlled study of thousands of people to evaluate safety and efficacy. This will take two to four years to reach any conclusion. After this, a government body approves new vaccines reviews the trial data and other information in the licensing application. In the fourth phase, post-approval studies happen that monitor effectiveness in real-world conditions.

However, for COVID-19 vaccine, medical scientists are shaving several years from traditional vaccine development timelines. They are using the full genetic sequence of SARS-Cov2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to develop vaccines that will contain a small amount of genetic code. The human body cells will take up this genetic information and produce elements of the virus, not infecting the person but triggering the immune system to respond.

To create a coronavirus vaccine, scientists are creating DNA or RNA based vaccines that can be produced in the lab. This approach is faster and more reliable than traditional vaccine processing, which uses viruses grown in eggs or cell cultures. Gingko Bioworks has committed the capacity to manufacturing DNA or RNA based vaccines.

The innovative approach, applied for this vaccine, could change how scientists develop future ones. The discovery of COVID-19 vaccine could make production more reliable and vaccines potentially more cost effective. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations ( CEPI) has made an urgent call for $2 billion in funding to support coronavirus's vaccine development, trials and enhanced manufacturing capacity.

Also read: Coronavirus: Japan PM Abe set to announce emergency, finalise $1 trillion stimulus package

Also read: Coronavirus impact: India withdraws export ban on 12 essential medicines

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Coronavirus pandemic: Why it takes so long to make a vaccine - Business Today

Research activity has ramped up in the US against COVID-19, with dozens of clinical trials underway or starting soon testing a range of potential treatment options.

An analysis of a federal database by Business Insider found a wide range of research activity varying by state. New York leads the nation with 11 coronavirus trials in the state.

Many trials are recruiting patients across the country, such as a study led by the National Institutes of Health to test remdesivir, an antiviral. That trial, for instance, is recruiting patients in more than a dozen states.

But 14 states still have no listed coronavirus trials, even as the virus has spread across the nation. Indiana and Nevada both have more than 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases but no clinical trials in their states to test experimental treatments.

The most widespread treatments being tested include the antiviral remdesivir, developed by Gilead Sciences, the anti-malaria pill hydroxychloroquine, and Kevzara, an anti-inflammatory arthritis drug developed by Sanofi and Regeneron.

Read more: Everything we know about remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, and 4 other drugs being tested against the coronavirus

The first US coronavirus vaccine trial is also underway, testing healthy volunteers in Washington state and Georgia.

Business Insider conducted the analysis on April 3. Additional listings are being added daily to the database, which has grown from listing 19 US-based trials a week ago on March 27 to 44 studies.

Read more: There are more than 40 potential coronavirus vaccines in the works. Here are the top efforts to watch, including the 8 vaccines set to be tested in people this year.

The analysis is limited to the timeliness of the database. Federal law requires clinical trials to be posted no later than three weeks after a study starts enrolling patients, which could mean some studies aren't yet included. Most researchers post a listing on the site before they start recruiting participants.

Additionally, Business Insider went through the listings to remove trials that were either observational, meaning they are not testing any treatment option, or mentioned COVID-19 in the listing but were not actually focused on the disease. (For example, one study in the District of Columbia focused on high blood pressure was updated to state that it was delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.)

Read more: How to enroll in a clinical trial for a malaria drug that could help treat the coronavirus or stop you from catching it

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MAP: Where coronavirus treatments and vaccines are being tested on patients in the US - Business Insider - Business Insider

SummerBLAST, the theaters summer education program, is also canceled. The Walnut Street Theater, meanwhile, has canceled The Best Man, Popcorn Falls, and Junie B. Jones, and notes on its website that it has temporarily suspended ticket sales for The Bodyguard, The Musical, which had been scheduled to run from May 12-July 12

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Chester County to begin testing for coronavirus antibodies; British prime minister moved to intensive care - The Philadelphia Inquirer

A vaccine is the ultimate goal in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, but its arrival is likely at least a year off, with that aggressive timeline being called a moonshot by one pharmaceutical company.

In the meantime, researchers are working to identify meaningful treatment options for patients with COVID-19, the deadly respiratory illness caused by the virus. And some early experiments and trials are encouraging.

For a much-needed dose of potential good news on the pandemic front, lets consider a handful of the many efforts underway to help COVID-19 patients.

Perhaps the best-known treatment being studied right now involves the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. President Donald Trump heralded it during a March 20 press conference. A few days later an Arizona man died after self-medicating with non-pharmaceutical chloroquine phosphate, leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to warn people not to take the substance to ward off coronavirus.

Despite this tragedy, hydroxychloroquine does indeed show promise in treating COVID-19, and doctors are already trying it out on patients.

Eight coronavirus patients at a veterans home in Lebanon, Oregon, for example, have been treated with hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin. The oldest of the patients, 104-year-old William Lapschies, appears to have fully recovered from the illness.

I was using it to give them a fighting chance, their doctor, Rob Richardson, told The Associated Press.

The Henry Ford Health System in Michigan announced last week that it is also treating some seriously ill COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine.

Early indications are that the drug reduces viral shedding, which help arrest the progression of COVID-19 in patients who are experiencing shortness of breath or who have developed pneumonia.

We are not using it in outpatients, and were not using it in patients with mild infection, Henry Ford infectious-disease specialist Dr. Marcus Zervos told reporters. We are using it, however, in patients who are sick enough to be hospitalized with pneumonia who we feel are at risk of progressing their infection.

University of Minnesota infectious-disease scientist David Bouware has begun a nationwide trial to determine if hydroxychloroquine could prevent people exposed to the coronavirus from developing COVID-19. The trial will have 1,500 participants.

Bouware says he is encouraged by the data, which indicates the drug might keep the coronavirus from entering cells, but he points out its early days.

Our goal, he said, is to find out, Does this actually work?

Preventing the progression of COVID-19 once someone is infected with the coronavirus is a key objective of medical researchers. The reason: So far, a significant percentage of the patients who have had to be put on ventilators have died.

In hopes of fewer severe cases reaching that point, researchers in Belgium have launched a clinical trial of the drug Leukine.

The study will use Leukine to treat 80 Covid-19 patients who are suffering from respiratory distress but not on ventilation. The goal is to try to prevent them from going to intensive care, Partner Therapeutics chief medical officer Dr. Debasish Roychowdhury told The Oregonian/OregonLive. Massachusetts-based Partner Therapeutics owns the rights for Leukine.

Earlier studies have shown that the drug, a yeast-derived version of GM-CSF, promotes lung repair. GM-CSF, or granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor, is an important protein the body makes and is critical for maintaining normal, healthy lungs, Roychowdhury pointed out.

Leukine has been around for 30 years and is currently being used to aid leukemia- and- bone-marrow-transplant patients.

The safety of the drug is very well-known, Roychowdhury said.

One of the worst-case scenarios for a COVID-19 patient is cytokine storm, when the immune system overreacts to the novel virus and floods the lungs with immune cells, causing severe inflammation. One possible way to keep those patients alive is through transfusions of plasma with COVID-19 antibodies from people who have recovered from the illness.

Five COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) at a hospital in Shenzhen, China, recently received such transfusions, a study posted to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported on March 27.

Though the sample size is quite small (and the critically ill patients were receiving various treatments, including antiviral medications, as part of all-out efforts to save them), the results are encouraging. All five of the patients receiving the transfusions were on ventilation when the treatment began. Following plasma transfusion, body temperature normalized within 3 days in 4 of 5 patients, the study states. A month after the transfusion, three of the five patients had been released from the hospital and the other two were in stable condition.

In another small experiment, doctors treated seven COVID-19 patients with mesenchymal stem cells, which are known for their peculiar and powerful immunoregulatory abilities. This treatment also showed promise. The pulmonary function and symptoms of these seven patients were significantly improved in 2 days after MSC transplantation, stated a study published in the journal Aging and Disease. Among them, two common and one severe patient were recovered and discharged in 10 days after treatment -- significantly faster than is typical for both moderate and severe cases.

Another drug being studied in the fight against COVID-19 is the anti-viral Remdesivir, which was developed for Ebola.

Remdesivir might stop the coronavirus from reproducing in the body. Northwestern Memorial Hospital infectious-disease specialist Dr. Babafemi Taiwo has called it a really special drug.

These and other treatments are in the very earliest stages of study, seeing as the novel coronavirus didnt exist in humans until late last year. It remains to be seen whether they will be effective and safe in large numbers of patients.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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Coronavirus vaccine will take time, so researchers are hunting for and finding promising new COVID-19 tre - OregonLive

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 31, 2020.

Chris Kleponis | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The first human trial testing a potential vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is "on track" with public distribution still projected in 12 to 18 months, which would be the "ultimate game changer" in the fight against the pandemic, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday.

U.S. health officials have been fast-tracking work with biotech companyModernato develop a vaccine to prevent COVID-19. Theybegan their first human trialson a potential vaccine March 16.

The trial had to test three different doses of the vaccine, Fauci said, adding that they've already tested the first two doses and are now administering the highest dose to human volunteers to see if there are any adverse reactions to it.

"It'll take a few months to get the data to where we'll feel confident to go to the phase two, and then a few months from now we'll be in phase two and I think we're right on target for the year to year and a half," Fauci said at a White House press conference with President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force.

Fauci said world health leaders dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 932,000 people globally, have all agreed that COVID-19 may cycle back in future seasons, and the only protection would be the development of a vaccine.

"The ultimate solution to a virus that might be coming back would be a vaccine," Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said. "The same way a vaccine for other diseases that were scourges in the past that now we don't even worry about."

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus task force coordinator, said she's been asking universities and private companies to develop rapid coronavirus tests to confirm whether health-care workers that have been treating coronavirus patients already have the antibodies to fight it.

She said the U.S. owes it to health-care workers many of whom have been treating coronavirus patients for a month now "the peace of mind that would come from knowing that you already were infected, you have the antibody, you're safe from reinfection 99.9% of the time." She said U.S. universities can get those tests out by Friday.

However, Fauci said that it's not their priority right now. The main focus is to develop widespread testing for somebody who is infected so they can conduct better case finding and isolation.

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White House advisor Fauci says coronavirus vaccine trial is on target and will be 'ultimate game changer' - CNBC

Thanks to the coronavirus, WrestleMania did not take place in Tampa this weekend as planned. And on Monday, the wrestler most identified with the city, Hulk Hogan, had a few things to say about COVID-19.

In a religious-themed Instagram post to kick off Easter week, Hogan suggested this new era of social distancing was a form of punishment or discipline from God.

In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship, Hogan wrote. God said, 'you want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadiums. You want to worship musicians, I will shut down Civic Centers. You want to worship actors, I will shut down theaters. You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You dont want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you cant go to church."

Hogan suggested God needed people to humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways in order to forgive their sin and ... heal their land.

Maybe we dont need a vaccine, Hogan wrote. Maybe we need to take this time of isolation from the distractions of the world and have a personal revival where we focus on the ONLY thing in the world that really matters. Jesus.

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Word up,can you handle the truth my brother only love HH In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship. God said, "you want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadiums. You want to worship musicians, I will shut down Civic Centers. You want to worship actors, I will shut down theaters. You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You don't want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you can't go to church" "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." Maybe we don't need a vaccine, Maybe we need to take this time of isolation from the distractions of the world and have a personal revival where we focus on the ONLY thing in the world that really matters. Jesus.

A post shared by Hulk Hogan (@hulkhogan) on Apr 6, 2020 at 5:57am PDT

Scientists are currently racing to produce a coronavirus vaccine, as more than a million cases and tens of thousands of deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 worldwide. That push is already being watched and addressed in the anti-vaccine movement, with politicians skeptical of vaccines forced into an uncomfortable spotlight. In 2019, the World Health Organization labeled vaccine hesitancy one of the top 10 threats to global health.

It was the second time in a week Hogan had gotten religious about the coronavirus on social media. A few days prior, he Instagrammed a highlighted bible passage, II Chronicles 7, verses 13 and 14, which reads: Whenever I hold back the rain or send locusts to eat up the crops or send an epidemic on my people, if they pray to me and repent and turn away from the evil they have been doing, then I will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins, and make their land prosperous again.

Hogan isnt the only celebrity to post that passage in recent weeks. Singer-rapper Young Thug did the same two weeks ago.

Hogan would have been front and center at the WrestleMania spectacle in Tampa. Alongside the rest of the NWO, he was scheduled to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in a ceremony at Amalie Arena. He was slated to host a pool party with Lil Jon today at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. And he likely would have had some role at WrestleMania itself.

Hogan recently reached a confidential settlement with Cox Radio Inc., talk host Mike Calta and others over an alleged conspiracy to leak a damaging sex tape. Calta later called the suit ridiculous nonsense," adding, I did not pay one cent.

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Hulk Hogan on coronavirus: Maybe we dont need a vaccine - Tampa Bay Times

By Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact reporter

As Americans retreat under orders to stay-at-home and stay socially distant, its hard to think too far in the future. But theres one group of medical experts who are firmly focused on what is to come: Vaccine researchers.

Most public officials have made clear not to expect a vaccine in the next few months. Even with an accelerated timetable, it takes time to make certain that a vaccine is safe and effective.

Here, weve summarized a discussion of coronavirus vaccine research with two researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine: Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health, and Wilbur Chen, an adult infectious disease expert with the same center. The discussion was sponsored by the National Press Foundation on April 3.

Its not unusual for vaccine development timelines to take 10 to 15 years, Chen said.

Generally, a vaccine trial has several phases. In an initial phase, lasting about six months, the vaccine is given to roughly 50 to 100 healthy volunteers. The focus in this phase is to make sure the vaccine is safe for general use, or to note whether bad reactions occur.

In the second phase, lasting six to 12 months, the number of volunteers is expanded to the hundreds. In addition to monitoring the vaccine for safety, researchers try to determine whether the shot produces an immune-system response.

The third phase can last from one to three years and involves thousands of patients, and it may require several rounds that focus on specific subgroups. This phase continues the goals of the first two, but it also collects data on more unusual negative interactions.

Yes. The first U.S. clinical trials for a coronavirus vaccine began in March, meaning they were up and running just a couple of months after the virus was detected an unusually quick start. There is also a separate vaccine being tested in China.

"When we have a pandemic, we try to truncate everything," Chen said. That was done in the case of Ebola virus outbreaks in recent years, and with the coronavirus pandemic, the timeline will be pushed even more, he said.

For coronavirus, "it could end up being less than 18 months, closer to 12, or in the absolutely best case, maybe less than that," Neuzil said. That would be "a tremendous feat," she said.

Neuzil said she expects that there will be "more, and ideally many more," vaccines to begin clinical trials in the coming months. Its beneficial to simultaneously test a range of experimental vaccines to maximize the chance that at least one will work.

In addition, having a lot of options makes it possible that a later design might offer practical improvements ease of administering the shot, or cost of production over the first effective vaccine on the market.

If all goes well, Neuzil said, there may be five or six vaccines in trials by six from months from now. "It could be higher," she said. "A couple are getting close."

Partly, it had to do with pandemic-related flexibility granted to federal regulators. But a big reason is that the vaccine being tested is an update of a vaccine format that has been used safely and successfully against other illnesses. Vaccines with more novel designs would typically require more extensive testing before bringing them to market.

Only about 5% to 10%, Neuzil said.

When a vaccine fails, its usually not because of safety concerns, she said. More likely, it didnt produce enough of an immune response to be useful in combating the germs its targeting. In other cases, the problem comes from difficulty in manufacturing it economically, given the demand. The latter shouldnt be a problem with the coronavirus, since demand will be sky high globally.

Vaccines based on a familiar design will be easier to produce, Neuzil said. Another factor that could speed up the process is if manufacturers, possibly with government backing, begin to build out their production capacity before the vaccine is approved.

Also, because of the urgency of the pandemic, different companies in different countries may collaborate on production, maximizing the number of doses that can be produced in parallel. Theres precedent for this "technology transfer" approach; a cholera vaccine is being produced by multiple manufacturers, Chen said.

The good news is that demand will be high, making it easer for vaccine manufacturers to make these decisions.

We dont know yet. "Weve only known about this virus for less than four months," Neuzil said. "Its impossible to answer this question until we have some longer-term data."

Scientists do have some hints from previous coronaviruses that circulated in recent years. For some of those, immunity only lasts six to 12 months. If thats the case with COVID-19, vaccinations may be an annual rite, or more frequently, just as influenza shots are.

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When will a coronavirus shot be ready? A look at the vaccine race. - WRAL.com

Mr. Johnson wrote Monday on Twitter from a hospital in London that he was in good spirits.

Mr. Johnson, 55, first experienced the symptoms of the virus on March 26, was tested that day and received the positive result around midnight, going into self-isolation in Downing Street, but chairing meetings by videolink.

He was originally expected to resume normal working at the end of last week, but on Friday Mr. Johnsons aides said that he still had symptoms, especially a high temperature, and had not ended his self-isolation. In a video statement in which he explained the situation, he still looked unwell.

Several other key figures in the government have self-isolated after suffering symptoms of the coronavirus, including the health secretary Matthew Hancock, who has now returned to work, and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty. Mr. Johnsons partner, Carrie Symonds, who is pregnant, disclosed on Saturday that she, too, is suffering symptoms.

Mr. Johnson was initially criticized for his slow response to the outbreak, but later moved to place Britain under a virtual lockdown, closing all nonessential shops, banning meetings of more than two people, and requiring people to stay in their homes, except for trips for food or medicine.

Before that his government had tried to take a different tack from the rest of Europe, which moved earlier to close businesses to try to halt the spread of the virus. Some officials, including Sir Patrick Vallance, Englands chief scientific adviser, had said that the government was looking to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission.

At one news conference in early March, Mr. Johnson described visiting a hospital where he said there were coronavirus patients. I shook hands with everybody, youll be pleased to know, he said, and I continue to shake hands.

The announcement of Mr. Johnsons hospitalization came hours after Queen Elizabeth II issued a rare televised address on Sunday, attempting to rally her fellow Britons to confront the pandemic with the resolve and self-discipline that have seen the nation through its greatest trials.

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Coronavirus Live Updates: Boris Johnson Moved to Intensive Care and the U.S. Death Toll Surpasses 10,000 - The New York Times

By Roni Caryn RabinA vaccine that was developed 100 years ago to fight the tuberculosis scourge in Europe is now being tested against the coronavirus by scientists eager to find a quick way to protect health care workers, among others.

The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine is still widely used in the developing world, where scientists have found that it does more than prevent TB. The vaccine prevents infant deaths from a variety of causes, and sharply reduces the incidence of respiratory infections.

The vaccine seems to train the immune system to recognize and respond to a variety of infections, including viruses, bacteria and parasites, experts say. There is little evidence yet that the vaccine will blunt infection with the coronavirus, but a series of clinical trials may answer the question in just months.

On Monday, scientists in Melbourne, Australia, started administering the BCG vaccine or a placebo to thousands of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and other health care workers the first of several randomized controlled trials intended to test the vaccines effectiveness against the coronavirus.

Nobody is saying this is a panacea, said Dr. Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases at Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne, who planned the trial. What we want to do is reduce the time an infected health care worker is unwell, so they recover and can come back to work faster.

A clinical trial of 1,000 health care workers began 10 days ago in the Netherlands, said Dr. Mihai Netea, an infectious disease specialist at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. Eight hundred health care workers have already signed up. (As in Australia, half of the participants will receive a placebo.)

Dr. Denise Faustman, director of immunobiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is seeking funding to start a clinical trial of the vaccine in health care workers in Boston as well. Preliminary results could be available in as little as four months.

We have really strong data from clinical trials with humans not mice that this vaccine protects you from viral and parasitic infections, said Faustman. Id like to start today.

iStock

The scientists cultured bacterial scrapings from cow udders, and continued to culture bovine TB for over a decade until it was weak enough that it no longer caused virulent disease when given to lab animals.

The weakened virus was first used in humans in 1921 and was widely adopted after World War II. Now BCG is primarily used in the developing world and in countries where TB is still prevalent, where it is given to over 100 million babies a year.

Like other vaccines, BCG has a specific target: TB. But evidence accumulating over the past decade suggests the vaccine also has so-called off-target effects, reducing viral illnesses, respiratory infections and sepsis, and appears to bolster the bodys immune system.

The idea is an offshoot of the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that the modern emphasis on cleanliness has deprived children of exposure to germs. The lack of training has resulted in weakened immune systems, less able to resist disease.

One of the earliest studies hinting at the broad benefits of BCG vaccination was a randomized trial of 2,320 babies in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, published in 2011, that reported that death rates among low-birth-weight babies were dramatically reduced after vaccination. A follow-up trial reported that infectious-disease mortality rates in low-birth-weight babies who were vaccinated were cut by more than 40%.

Other epidemiological studies including a 25-year study of over 150,000 children in 33 countries have reported a 40% lower risk of acute lower respiratory tract infections in children who received a BCG vaccine. A study in the elderly found that consecutive BCG vaccinations reduced the incidence of acute upper respiratory tract infections.

A recent review by the World Health Organization concluded that BCG had beneficial off-target effects, and recommended doing more trials of the vaccine against a wider range of infections.

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While he described the BCG vaccine as underappreciated, he emphasized that it was not a specific COVID-19 vaccine. BCG also cannot be administered to anyone who has a compromised immune system, because it is a live-attenuated vaccine meaning it contains live but weakened TB.

Faustman said it should not be used in hospitalized patients with active disease, because it may not work fast enough and could interact poorly with other treatments.

Not everyone is convinced BCG holds much promise. Dr. Domenico Accili, an endocrinologist at Columbia University, said he thought efforts to use the vaccine against the coronavirus sound a bit like magical thinking.

While acknowledging that BCG is a non-specific booster of the immune system, he said, we should be able to deploy a more tailored approach.

One question is what effect the vaccine may have in patients whose immune systems overreact to the coronavirus, resulting in what are called cytokine storms. Dr. Randy Cron, an expert on cytokine storms at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said it was impossible to know.

A recent analysis of the disparate toll the new coronavirus has taken on middle- and high-income countries found a correlation with BCG policies, concluding that countries that did not implement or had abandoned universal BCG vaccination have had more coronavirus infections per capita and higher death rates. (Low-income countries were excluded from the analysis because of unreliable COVID-19 reporting data and generally poor medical systems.)

You can make a new vaccine, Faustman said. Were really smart, and we can do that. But its two years off, and two years is going to be two years too late.

If weve got something generic globally at hand that we can use to make the human host stronger, this is a win-win for the public right away.

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A 100-yr-old vaccine is being tested against the new coronavirus. Can it work? - Economic Times