There's some interesting correlations between the use of the Calmette-Guerin inoculation against tuberculosis (BCG) and improved survival rates amongst those infected with Covid-19.
This might explain the strikingly different death rates among culturally and socially similar countries such as Spain and Portugal.
This does seem rather odd on first glance; BCG is aimed at protecting against tuberculosis, a rather different disease to coronavirus (bacterial rather than viral for example). However these has been evidence from past BCG studies of a broad, general, protective effect against respiratory infections, as well as measles and malaria.
For those unfamiliar with BCG it's an old vaccination developed over a century ago, trialed in the 1920s and commonly administered today in the developing world. It's named after the bacteriologists involved in it's development; Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin.
Australia has begun a BCG vaccination clinical trial among 4,0000 health workers and five other countries have similar trials.
Here's one of the first papers on the subject.
Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study [Pre-print, not yet peer reviewed]
More.
Euronews piece..
Bloomberg.
Critique in Nature.
UroToday.
This might explain the strikingly different death rates among culturally and socially similar countries such as Spain and Portugal.
This does seem rather odd on first glance; BCG is aimed at protecting against tuberculosis, a rather different disease to coronavirus (bacterial rather than viral for example). However these has been evidence from past BCG studies of a broad, general, protective effect against respiratory infections, as well as measles and malaria.
For those unfamiliar with BCG it's an old vaccination developed over a century ago, trialed in the 1920s and commonly administered today in the developing world. It's named after the bacteriologists involved in it's development; Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin.
Australia has begun a BCG vaccination clinical trial among 4,0000 health workers and five other countries have similar trials.
Here's one of the first papers on the subject.
Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study [Pre-print, not yet peer reviewed]
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Originally Posted by Abstract
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.
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Euronews piece..
Bloomberg.
Critique in Nature.
UroToday.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2Vb4TsC
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