The idea of repurposing vaccines for other diseases isn't new.
It dates back to when the oral polio vaccine was first widely used in the 1960s and 70s.
Now, Gizmodo reports a group of scientists is proposing doing just that to protect people from the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
The authors include scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health as well as Robert Gallo, one of the researchers who discovered HIV.