BCG Shots Could Slow Down Covid-19 Spread, Says Study

The debate over the anti-tuberculosis vaccine’s ability to protect against Covid-19 got a fresh lease with an American research paper stating that the BCG ‘slows down’ the infection’s spread within the community—at least in the first 30 days.

Mumbai:

The paper published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed medical journal brought out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that countries with mandatory Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination showed “slower infection and death rates” during the first 30 days of the Covid-19 out-break in their country.

The researchers estimated only 468 people are likely to have died from Covid-19 in the US as of March 29—which is 19% of the actual figure of 2,467 deaths by that date—if it had instituted mandatory BCG vaccination several decades ago.