By Sanchita Sharma
The inexpensive and widely-used Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccine (click here) that protects against childhood tuberculosis also prevents severe infection and death from coronavirus disease (Covid-19), concluded two peer-reviewed studies released last week, including one led by Indian researchers from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Delhi.
The JNU study from India found that the quality of protection depends on the BCG strain used to make the vaccine, with Mixed, Pasteur and Japan strains being superior to the three other strains which together account for more than 90% of the BCG vaccines being used in the world. The peer-reviewed study was published in Cell Death and Disease, which part of the Nature group of journals. The second study from the US, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also linked BCG vaccination with reduced Covid-19 deaths....
A vaccine that actually already exists that has an effect on COVID-19. BUT, the incidence of COVID-19 is high in India. How many people are vaccineated wtih BCG?
BCG, or bacille Calmette-Guerin, (click here) is a vaccine for tuberculosis (TB) disease. Many foreign-born persons have been BCG-vaccinated. BCG is used in many countries with a high prevalence of TB to prevent childhood tuberculous meningitis and miliary disease. However, BCG is not generally recommended for use in the United States because of the low risk of infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the variable effectiveness of the vaccine against adult pulmonary TB, and the vaccine’s potential interference with tuberculin skin test reactivity. The BCG vaccine should be considered only for very select persons who meet specific criteria and in consultation with a TB expert....
The statistic of COVID-19 is incomplete. The death rate is different in India than in The West. The death rate is far lower. It the death rate lower because of a vaccine or because of bad reporting of statistics.
India is densely populated and yet is not leading the world in cases. India is fourth in the number of incidences.
By Priyanka Pulla
...Even as India struggles, (click here) the true scale of the epidemic there might not be apparent. The country has an incomplete death-registration system, which means that not all deaths are recorded and the documented cause is often incorrect.
This raises questions about India’s COVID-19 mortality rate, which is officially 11 deaths per million people in the population — among the lowest in the world. By comparison, the United Kingdom has seen 635 deaths per million people, and the United States has seen 376....
