A vaccine against tuberculosis that was hoped to protect health care workers against COVID has failed to get over the line, an Australian study has found.
A trial into the immune-boosting benefits of the TB vaccine BCG looked at whether it could reduce the impact of COVID among healthcare workers on the pandemic frontline in the first six months after vaccination.
No joy
But the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute-led international BRACE trial across five different countries, including Australia, found it failed to reduce the risk in workers.
In fact, a slightly higher proportion of those who received the vaccine had an episode of COVID than those who received a non-active placebo jab.
The BCG jab was originally developed to prevent TB and is still given to over 130 million babies worldwide each year for that purpose.
Previous research showed BCG boosted ‘front-line’ immunity in infants and protected against some respiratory infections in adolescents and adults, which was the rationale for testing it against COVID in the BRACE trial.
It was hoped the vaccine could be repurposed to buy crucial time in a pandemic such as COVID-19 until disease-specific vaccines were available.
Experts say the findings, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, show that BCG vaccine’s lack of protection against COVID highlighted the importance of trials, even during a pandemic.
Vaccine ticks the boxes
But in a vaccine win, pharmaceutical company Moderna’s Spikevax has become the first COVID-19 vaccine in Australia to receive full registration from the Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in people aged six and over, after new data confirmed its safety and effectiveness.
Spikevax received the full TGA approval, after first receiving provisional approval in August 2021.
Its full registration will allow a data review and registration process for updated COVID vaccines that target emerging subvariants in the same way that flu vaccines are registered to allow for annual strain updates.