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mwooldri

(10,291 posts)
Wed Apr 1, 2020, 09:10 PM Apr 2020

A Vaccine From The 1920s Is Now Being Tested For Use Against The Coronavirus Pandemic

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2020/03/31/a-vaccine-from-the-1920s-could-help-fight-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

Researchers in a handful of countries are testing a century-old tuberculosis vaccine to see if it can give a boost to the immune system to help it fight off the novel coronavirus now causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Clinical trials of the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, which was first developed in the early 1920s, are planned in Europe and Australia to see if it can help reduce the prevalence and severity of COVID-19 symptoms.


As a child, I got the BCG vaccine at school. The US has no history of regularly using BCG vaccinations.

A paper was published ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1 ) - that has yet to be peer reviewed - with data that seems to suggest countries that routinely did BCG vaccination and for a long continuous time have a lower rate of death.

This is not to say at this stage the BCG vaccine should be taken to prevent Covid-19 or to reduce symptoms. It's too early to tell. It might pan out to nothing, but that's what research is all about.
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A Vaccine From The 1920s Is Now Being Tested For Use Against The Coronavirus Pandemic (Original Post) mwooldri Apr 2020 OP
Interesting. I was born in france and had this vaccine. drray23 Apr 2020 #1
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