Does Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccination protects from COVID-19? A Uni-center Study

ABSTRACT

Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is a vaccine for tuberculosis and is administered at birth in several countries, however there are many countries that have no BCG vaccination policy and coincidently they are worst hit by Covid-19 pandemic in terms of disease severity and mortality.The study was conducted to determine the association between BCG vaccine and COVID-19 severity. Study included total 150 participants visiting Department of Medicine, Mayo Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. Data regarding BCG vaccination, comorbidity, demographics, disease severity were collected through self-structured questionnaire using non-probability convenient sampling. Prior written informed consents were taken from the participants. Male and female were in equal proportion. 68.6% were married, only 3.9% were smokers. Analysis revealed that only 10 (6.5%) were hypertensive and10 (6.5%) were diabetic. There was no BCG vaccine protection against Covid-19 in the current study. Severity of disease was similar in vaccinated and non-vaccinated patients. But it can not be applicable to whole population. Another fact is that most of Pakistani population is BCG vaccinated due to national policy and coincidently Pakistan suffered less as compared to high hit countries. There maybe some association between BCG vaccination and Covid-19 or some other environmental factor and genetics that need to be explored.