Is BCG vaccine making a difference in Covid positive case incidence ? My personal research
I wanted to test the claim / hypothesis that BCG vaccination is probably giving Indians better immunity against the COVID outbreak. So, I looked at the testing, +ve cases, deaths, recovery data for countries with no BCG vaccination program and countries with mandatory programs.
Look at the data in the table below (Data from John Hopkins University Tracker on 23.04.2020 at 11:00 am IST and https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries)
What is striking about the data in yellow? The rate of +ve cases to tests done ranges from 1.9% to 9.1% for group A countries; and 12% to 34% for group B countries. India, Japan, S Korea seem to have significantly lower rate of +ve cases out of folks tested. Germany is above them but still lower than the rates in other western countries. The fatality rate across these two groups is also starkly different.
Does this table validate the hypothesis that countries with mandatory BCG vaccination programs are seeing lower incidence of covid +ve cases and lower death rates?
India, Japan, S Korea have had mandatory BCG vaccination program for decades. US, Italy, France, Span don’t have mandatory vaccination. Parts of East Germany had mandatory testing till unification. Clearly BCG vaccination creates some immunity that is giving folks in India, Japan, S Korea and parts of Germany some advantage.
The impact of BCG is not only on +ve cases but also fatality rate (deaths per 100 +ve cases). Does BCG also give a population higher immunity to fight back the virus and we don’t see high patient loads? The mortality rate of western Europe and US is nearly 3–4 times higher than countries with mandatory BCG programs.
My own limited research is indicating that BCG vaccine is playing a part boosting immunity in Group A countries. This is a personal conclusion and you must make your own conclusions.
