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Antibody levels rose in the children who received it, suggesting the vaccine protects against infection. But the data were gathered before the arrival of Omicron.
Researchers at the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital recently partnered with the Expanded Program on Immunization Consortium, an international team studying early life immunization, to collect and comprehensively profile blood samples from newborns immunized with the century-old Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, using a powerful “big data” approach.
The century-old Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine against tuberculosis is one of the world's oldest and most widely used vaccines, used to immunize 100 million newborns every year. Given in countries with endemic TB, it has surprisingly been found to protect newborns and young infants against multiple bacterial and viral infections unrelated to TB. There's even some evidence that it can reduce severity of COVID-19.
The eventual answers to these Covid mysteries will determine our relationship with Covid and and how we'll fight a future pandemic.
A booster shot of the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech increased the level of neutralizing antibodies against both the original version of the virus and the omicron variant in a small trial of children age 5 to 11, the companies announced Thursday.