26 March 2020 - Repurposing existing drugs to tackle the coronavirus has key advantages over developing a therapy from scratch: as a known quantity, they are backed by voluminous clinical data on the medicinal properties and side-effects.

If proven effective against the coronavirus, supply could be read­ily increased, a stopgap until a vaccine became available.

Testing of the TB vaccine in frontline medical staff here — in tandem with similar trials in The Netherlands and Britain and a study on elderly patients in Greece — comes as scientists from the University of Queensland co-ordinate a program to trial another potential treatment combining anti-HIV and malarial drugs in 50 Australian hospitals.

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