JOIN USCovid-19 fight: ICMR begins trials to use BCG vaccine; results to be known next year
Indian Council of Medical Research has begun a trial in which anti-tuberculosis BCG vaccine which is given to babies after birth, will be administered to 60 plus people to find out if the vaccine protects the elderly from Covid-19.
Being conducted at six sites, the trial spearheaded by the ICMR’s National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, Chennai will entail BCG vaccination for nearly 1,600 individuals, who would be monitored for six months to check if the strategy works.
The ICMR decided to conduct following multiple scientific reports of how countries with BCG vaccine in their child immunization portfolio had benefited indirectly with a lower number of Covid-19 positive cases as well as deaths.
“BCG boosts immunity. This is the reason we have gone on trials to check whether the vaccine can be used in elders. Whether it is efficient or not will be known only after results come out,” Manoj Murhekar, director, NIRT told DH.
The trials began in July in Chennai and Tiruvallur districts of Tamil Nadu. Other sites are National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad; National Institute for Research in Environmental Health in Bhopal; GS Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai; National Institute for Implementation Research on Non-Communicable Diseases in Jodhpur and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.
“The study will cover around 1,600 healthy individuals above the age of 60. Vaccination will be over by September-October, after which they will be monitored for the next six months to check if it works,” Murhekar said.
The principal investigator and NIRT scientist C Padmapriyadarsini said while the vaccine would be administered to around 1,600 people across the sites, the institute currently didn’t have a compilation of the number of people who received the shots.
“We do not have the number of people who have been given the vaccination at present. We have not noticed any side-effects in any of the patients so far, but will be able to provide a better response after the completion of the trials.”
The BCG vaccine is one of the several repurposed therapies that scientists are currently experimenting with in order to find out a way to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
“BCG is an immunopotentiator. It is being tested elsewhere also. A large trial in Australia is being carried out with the aim to see if it offers non-specific protection. Even if it works to some extent and short term the advantage is it's very cheap,” commented veteran virologist Shahid Jameel, chief executive officer of Wellcome Trust-Department of Biotechnology India Alliance, which is an India-UK partnership to promote biotechnology research.
Gobardhan Das, a biologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi who researches on BCG vaccine concurs. “Revaccination with BCG is a strategy being tried around the world and trials are yielding results. In several other diseases, BCG is administered to the adults as a part of the therapy,” he said.