COVID-19 Global Diaries: 'I'm trialling a vaccine so the whole world will benefit'

In Australia Kaya Gardiner, Project Manager of Infectious Diseases, is working tirelessly with her team to help slow the pandemic

It was back in late January that we started hearing about coronavirus cases in Wuhan, and to be honest we weren’t too worried about it reaching Australia. At the time it seemed very similar to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), which never actually made it here. But then suddenly we heard that cases were spreading around the world and that it was more infectious than we initially imagined – and we had to do something.

Here at Melbourne's Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, we have a team who’ve been looking into how the BCG vaccine could help. It was initially created to prevent tuberculosis, but as it was rolled out it became apparent that it was reducing the death rate of other diseases. Could it also reduce the severity of the symptoms caused be COVID-19? We voiced our idea on March 6: to give healthcare workers (those not yet exposed to COVID-10) the BCG vaccine and see if it would boost their immunity and lead to a less severe disease.

Our aim is not to provide a cure for coronavirus, but to install a vaccine that will help shift the curve to the left, meaning that people who were going to end up in the ICU will end up in wards, and the people who need the wards will end up staying home. For us, this trial is not just a short-term fix; if we complete the study we could potentially have an off-the-shelf, cheap, safe intervention for further pandemics.

It’s been a long, testing and trying time for us – we're a team of 20 staff who’ve been working seven days a week. Most of us are women, we have children and families at home and we are practicing social distancing. It's certainly not the ideal situation to be preparing for a trial this size, but the excitement is keeping us going – the possibility of potentially doing something that will stem a world-wide pandemic is keeping us going. The attitude of the departments, healthcare workers and staff are keeping us going too. We will pull through.

Maria Coole is a contributing editor on Marie Claire.

Hello Marie Claire readers – you have reached your daily destination. I really hope you’re enjoying our reads and I'm very interested to know what you shared, liked and didn’t like (gah, it happens) by emailing me at: maria.coole@freelance.ti-media.com

But if you fancy finding out who you’re venting to then let me tell you I’m the one on the team that remembers the Spice Girls the first time round. I confidently predicted they’d be a one-hit wonder in the pages of Bliss magazine where I was deputy editor through the second half of the 90s. Having soundly killed any career ambitions in music journalism I’ve managed to keep myself in glow-boosting moisturisers and theatre tickets with a centuries-spanning career in journalism.

Yes, predating t’internet, when 'I’ll fax you' was grunted down a phone with a cord attached to it; when Glastonbury was still accessible by casually going under or over a flimsy fence; when gatecrashing a Foo Fighters aftershow party was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy and tapping Dave Grohl on the shoulder was... oh sorry I like to ramble.

Originally born and bred in that there Welsh seaside town kindly given a new lease of life by Gavin & Stacey, I started out as a junior writer for the Girl Guides and eventually earned enough Brownie points to move on and have a blast as deputy editor of Bliss, New Woman and editor of People newspaper magazine. I was on the launch team of Look in 2007 - where I stuck around as deputy editor and acting editor for almost ten years - shaping a magazine and website at the forefront of body positivity, mental wellbeing and empowering features. More recently, I’ve been Closer executive editor, assistant editor at the Financial Times’s How To Spend It (yes thanks, no probs with that life skill) and now I’m making my inner fangirl’s dream come true by working on this agenda-setting brand, the one that inspired me to become a journalist when Marie Claire launched back in 1988.

I’m a theatre addict, lover of Marvel franchises, most hard cheeses, all types of trees, half-price Itsu, cats, Dr Who, cherry tomatoes, Curly-Wurly, cats, blueberries, cats, boiled eggs, cats, maxi dresses, cats, Adidas shelltops, cats and their kittens. I’ve never knowingly operated any household white goods and once served Ripples as a main course. And finally, always remember what the late great Nora Ephron said, ‘Everything is copy.’