Tuberculosis and Polio Vaccines Being Tested for Limited Protection Against Coronavirus

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread globally, scientists are now conducting tests to see if vaccines meant for tuberculosis (TB) and polio can provide protection from the deadly coronavirus.

According to a report by The Washington Post, tests are currently underway to determine if the TB vaccine called bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG, can slow the novel coronavirus. The BCG vaccine has already received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and has a long history of safe usage. A team of researchers led by Dr Jeffrey D Cirillo, a professor of microbial pathogenesis and immunology at Texas A&M Health Science Center, is now testing the TB vaccine to see if it can reduce the severity of coronavirus.

“This vaccine has a very broad ability to strengthen your immune response. We call it ‘trained immunity. This could make a huge difference in the next two to three years while the development of a specific vaccine is developed for COVID-19,” said Cirillo in a statement from Texas A&M Health Science Center newsletter.

Azra Raza, a professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, told The Washington Post that BCG could improve people's ability to fight pathogens, even in patients who are given the vaccine for another approved use that is bladder cancer. “Researchers have looked at developing countries where mortality rates are lower, in these countries BCG vaccine is widely used. It’s not like they’re not getting the infection. The rate (of positive infections) is high. But they’re just not dying. It is raging through, but they’re not dying of it,” stated Raza in the report by The Washington Post.

According to The Washington Post report, a group of scientists is also testing the polio vaccine oral OPV and its effect on slowing COVID-19. “Vaccines developed against TB and polio have already been used in millions of people and could offer a low-risk way to rev up the body’s first line of defense, the innate immune system, against a broad array of pathogens, including the coronavirus,” the group said.

Robert Gallo, a world-renowned researcher who co-discovered that HIV is the cause of AIDS, said that OPV had a strong safety record. “This is not complicated, the science is there to support the idea, and we need to act fast,” said Gallo in a statement by the University of Maryland.