BCG vaccine covid-19: The Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine is a vaccine that is mainly used in African, Asian and South American countries to protect against Tuberculosis. The vaccine is administered at birth through an injection into the skin usually on the shoulder.
Rich countries especially the western countries and also Australia which do not have a BCG vaccination policy saw ten times greater incidence of and deaths from Covid-19, compared with those who do, a forthcoming study from medical researchers in the US and UK, which analysed data from 178 countries, has found.
CG, or Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, is a vaccine for tuberculosis and is administered at birth in countries that have historically suffered from the disease, such as India. Many rich nations, such as the US, Italy and Holland, have never had a universal BCG vaccination policy.
The study looked at Covid-19 instances and mortality for 15 days between 9 and 24 March in 178 countries and concluded that “incidence of Covid-19 was 38.4 per million in countries with BCG vaccination compared to 35.
“While we expected to see a protective effect of BCG, the magnitude of the difference (almost 10 fold) in incidence and mortality (of Covid-19) between countries with and without a BCG vaccination program was pleasantly surprising,” said Dr Ashish Kamat, a co-author of the paper and professor of Urologic Oncology (Surgery) and cancer research at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
Their “correlation” study, expected to be published shortly by PLOS journal, is largely a statistical one and comes with caveats because of possibility of confounding factors. But it is more comprehensive than an initial one conducted in New York, which prompted a scaling up of clinical trials on people with Covid-19.
To reduce the possibility of error, the researchers re-evaluated cases during the course of the pandemic and made country-by-country comparisons including between Ireland and the UK, Mr Hegarty said. “We did not expect to see such a marked difference.”
“Over the 15 days, incidence of Covid-19 was 38 per million in countries with BCG vaccination whereas the incidence of Covid-19 was 358 per million in the absence of such a programme. The death rate was 4.28 per million in countries with BCG programmes and 40 per million in countries without such a programme,” he added.
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