University of Exeter Recruiting COVID-19 Vaccine Study Participants

Scientists at the University of Exeter in the UK and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, have begun testing the 100-year old Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine as a potential COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Around 1,000 people will take part in the trial at the University of Exeter, as of early October 2020. The BRACE clinical trial intends to recruit 10,000 healthcare workers who work in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Brazil.

On May 20, 2020, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and four other institutions in the USA announced they were recruiting people for a similar clinical trial to test the BCG vaccine.

The BCG vaccine was originally designed to stop tuberculosis, but there is some recent evidence it can protect people against SARS-CoV-2 virus infections.