As the world races to produce an effective Covid-19 vaccine, some experts are turning their attention to a polio vaccine as a way to provide temporary protection against coronavirus.
There is plenty of evidence that existing inoculations such as polio vaccines protect children against a wide range of infections and it's worth trying them out against the new coronavirus, a team of experts wrote in Science magazine Thursday.
It would make sense to at least test it to see if it helps against coronavirus, said Konstantin Chumakov of the FDA and Dr. Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, and colleagues. The oral polio vaccine produces herd effects, they wrote. Herd immunity is reached when the majority of a given population -- 70% to 90% -- becomes immune to an infectious disease, either because they have become infected and recovered, or through vaccination.
"In Africa, when measles vaccine was introduced in the community, the overall mortality in children declined by more than 50%, a reduction that was far larger than anticipated on the basis of the protection against measles deaths alone," they added.
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