Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to study whether the MMR vaccine can either prevent Covid-19 infection or make the illness less severe by giving the shot to 30,000 volunteers.
That's because the MMR vaccine carries small amounts of live, weakened viruses; and there are similarities between those viruses and the new coronavirus. They have the similar proteins on their surfaces that are involved in infecting cells in the body.
Researchers think that young antibodies made in response to the MMR vaccine may recognize and fight the coronavirus.
"This type of vaccine appears to strengthen the body's immune response to infections in general, not just to the viruses in that particular vaccine," said one of the collaborative's principal investigators, Dr. Michael Avidan, the anesthesiology department chair at Washington U.
