AS THE work to create a safe way to tackle the COVID-19 global pandemic continues medical researchers are beginning to identify consistent traits which are hoped will lead to the vaccine being developed sooner rather than later

In a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed an epidemiological study looking into the correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19 has thrown up some interesting findings.

Essentially, countries that have adopted a robust and long standing Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) programme seem better placed to stave off the ascending death rate which has been seen in countries such as Italy, a nation the report identifies as ‘without universal policies of BCG vaccination’.

An abstract of the study reads: “COVID-19 has spread to most countries in the world. Puzzlingly, the impact of the disease is different in different countries.

“These differences are attributed to differences in cultural norms, mitigation efforts, and health infrastructure. Here we propose that national differences in COVID-19 impact could be partially explained by the different national policies respect to Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) childhood vaccination. BCG vaccination has been reported to offer broad protection to respiratory infections.

“We compared large number of countries BCG vaccination policies with the morbidity and mortality for COVID-19. We 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. Countries that have a late start of universal BCG policy (Iran, 1984) had high mortality, consistent with the idea that BCG protects the vaccinated elderly population.

“We also found that BCG vaccination also reduced the number of reported COVID-19 cases in a country. The combination of reduced morbidity and mortality makes BCG vaccination a potential new tool in the fight against COVID-19.”

The full report can be found on the Medrxiv.org website