This is some very enthusiastic news amid the fight against coronavirus! An American study released on July 9, 2020 in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) magazine, tends to show that the BCG vaccine is said to have some effects on Covid-19. The study reads it would be a “protecting effect” explaining the “degree of universal BCG vaccination deployment in a country, and COVID-19 mortality in different socially similar European countries was observed”.
What does it mean? The authors of the study noticed that “every 10% increase in the BCG index was associated with a 10.4% reduction in COVID-19 mortality”. Observations in the study are based on 22 countries around the world, socially comparable (access to health, infrastructures, level of urbanization, and so on).
What are the effects of the vaccine? It seems to confer “broad enhanced immunity to respiratory infections”. Scientists went from the idea that countries who have no domestic BCG vaccination program “would have greater COVID-19 mortality” than countries who have a program. BCG vaccination – first protecting against the Koch bacteria responsible for tuberculosis – would generate “broad immune protection” against Covid-19 as Bulgarian immunology professor Bogdan Petrounov explains to the AFP.
Yet, these works do not show “direct evidence from clinical trials […] to recommend the use of BCG for the control and prevention of COVID-19”, but a simple link. The research must go on to know if the vaccine incidence is real or if it is a simple coincidence.
