Surge in cases in Australia
The devastating coronavirus pandemic has threatened the whole world. With over 7 lakh confirmed cases and almost 34,000 deaths, the pandemic has become a global concern.. In Australia also, over 4000 cases have been found positive. The Australian government is taking precautionary measures to cope with the disease. It has banned gatherings of more than 2 people in order to dampen the spread of the disease. Moreover, the scientists in Australia are also toiling hard to find a vaccine against the coronavirus.
The BCG Vaccine
Recently, the health care workers in Melbourne are being given a vaccine that is been used to prevent Tuberculosis to see if it will protect them against the coronavirus. The bacillus Calmette- Guerin, or BCG shot has been widely used for about 100 years due to the appreciation for its off-target benefits. It is a common immunotherapy for early stage bladder cancer as well as it trains the body’s first line of immune defense to fight infections better.
The World Health Organization has also said it is important to know whether the BCG vaccine can reduce the disease in those infected with the coronavirus, and is encouraging international groups to collaborate with a study led by Nigel Curtis, Head of Infectious Diseases Research, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.
Boosting the Immune System
“It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way,” said Curtis. He is also a Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Melbourne and Head of Infectious Diseases unit at the Royal Children Hospital. He further informed that a similar research is going on in the Netherlands and he’s in discussions with potential trial sites in other Australian cities as well as Boston.
