May BCG vaccination be protective against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2? What do you think? Have we got any scientific evidence?
Stay healthy,
Monika
The using of BCG as immuno modulator or immunostimulant is old approach to stimulate the non specific immunity and may it work in non infected population, but the efficacy will exist for short period
The correlation between the beginning of universal BCG vaccination and the protection against COVID-19 suggests that BCG might confer long-lasting protection against the current strain of coronavirus.
It is found that countries without universal policies of BCG vaccination (Italy, Nederland, USA) have been more severely affected compared to countries with universal and long-standing BCG policies.
file:///C:/Users/nirmal/Downloads/Correlation_between_universal_BCG_vaccination_poli.pdf
Somebody told me a big news about BCG today
The following paper seems serious for example
"Non-specific effects of BCG vaccine on viral infections."
Moorlag SJCFM, Arts RJW, van Crevel R, Netea MG.
And this seems to make sens in the mind of the experts, what I respect, especially if backed up by solid data on other infections. Lets wait the real studies to come out.
Data seem to be there for example in this one (for babies, not the most affected population...)
"Nonspecific (Heterologous) Protection of Neonatal BCG Vaccination Against Hospitalization Due to Respiratory Infection and Sepsis"
María José de Castro, Jacobo Pardo-Seco , Federico Martinón-Torres
Some are for the elderly, but again this is related to other infections.
But i cannot access these papers.... Crazy that in these time Pornhub offer open acces and not Elsevier.... What a world...
About corona I only found this paper named from all the articles i quickly screened
"Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study "
on medrvix
I don't understand is it the only paper about it and coronavirus?!
It does the job of doing noise, but for me it doesnt demonstrate anything.
After a quick look at it I am not at all convinced that there is something strong in this paper.
After I don't know statistics, and especially the one they are using. Could be very cool that this vaccine have such an effect.
To speak about the medrvix publication "Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study " on coronavirus.
Because:
1] it was not peer reviewed !? Lets wait a proper review by people who knows maybe. Especially for the statistical part.
2] It exclude Canada from the group of interest (which already contain only 5 country!) when it is present on their source http://www.bcgatlas.org/
[Canada did stopped its policy for automatic vaccination in the early 60 in fact, but only in some provinces, why not speaking about it? because the death rate is very low?]
3] The country group is said of middle and high income, when there is only high income countries (Lebanon is a complex country due to its diaspora and wars, and for the moment 17 death [04/04/2020]... with foreigner included).
4] Figure 1:
The statistics seems to be obtained looking at the number of death/million inhabitants. Is it a relevant metrix at such a stage of the epidemics?
No adjustment to the stage of the epidemics in the countries (days since the 100 cases for example..) or by the median age?
The country in the group of interest were either impacted early by the coronavirus (Italy, USA) or small countries (Netherland, Belgium, Lebanon).
There is not many information on the countries part of the other group (middle)
Also they include low income countries in the plot, when they say its not relevant? why? The sampling issue and lack of proper healthcare make any conclusions hard to draw.
I would like to see the distribution of the income in the middle group.. with a colormap for example.
6]Figure 2:
The explanation of the figure is not good?
Is a r=0.45 a good r?
I am confused about this figure and their different time scales. We got a linear correlation they say?
7]Figure 3:
I would like to see the distribution of the income in the middle group.. with a colormap for example.
7]Figure 4:
No time
My quick conclusion:
> Isn't only a subset of well developed countries that can afford to not vaccinate their population against tuberculosis?...
Excluding Lebanon because it is too early in the epidemic anyway?
(And Belgium and Nederlands are small countries that are potentially already fully impacted as their capital urban center represent the majority of the population and are difficult to compare to bigger nations?. Portugal is not uniformly affected. I would like to see where is Switzland but map is not accessible , still is seems not uniformly affected neither.)
> Still the idea from the experts is interesting to dig. But these statistics doesn't prove much for me.
As of now, we’re not having any sure shot research which could support the mechanism of protective action of BCG vaccines against COVID-19.....
Still if we refer to .....mechanistic studies done on BCG and M. Tb, we could get some theoretical clue about immunological responses at molecular levels....
One such reference study was done in Ohio, USA in 2017 by Moliva, Turner and Torrelles.
Please see the following RG link.
Article Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supp...
Also visit the following useful link.
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(21)00279-4/fulltext
Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination does not provide protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2212616
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00356-23
Also, see the RG link below.
Article Efficacy of BCG Vaccination against COVID-19: Systematic Rev...