INTRODUCTION
respiratory tract infections, tuberculosis
HAND INFECTION, RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTIONS, TUBERCULOSIS, CORONAVIRUS, SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME
The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is a widely used live-attenuated vaccine against tuberculosis. Routine childhood and/or health care worker (HCW) vaccination is performed worldwide, except in some countries with a low tuberculosis burden, including the Netherlands. New interest in BCG has arisen after recent studies showed that BCG vaccination also has nonspecific protective effects against other respiratory tract infections due to epigenetic and metabolic reprogramming of innate immune cells (In the first year of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, testing and contact-tracing capacity, as well as personal protection equipment supplies, were limited and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were not yet available. These conditions raised challenges, especially for HCWs and vulnerable adults. HCWs were burdened with a high risk of exposure and infection while the demand for medical personnel increased (We recently published the results of the BCG-Corona trial in 1,511 Dutch HCWs (