BCG Vaccination May Provide Immunity Against COVID 19.
Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the major causes of infectious morbidity and mortality globally, claiming millions of lives every year. In 1993, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized tuberculosis (TB) as a global emergency.Twenty-five years later, TB remains a major public health challenge. It is the single leading infectious cause of death globally. An estimated one quarter of the world’s population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis , giving rise to 9.4 million new cases of active TB disease each year . The majority of the TB burden exists in 22 high-burden countries, but with immigration and global travel TB is difficult to eliminate from any one country
The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, first introduced in 1921, continues to be the only vaccine used to prevent TB . Despite nearly a century of use, BCG remains controversial, with known variations in BCG substrains, vaccine efficacy, policies, and practices across the world.
After 27 years now a new virus became a global emergency name COVID 19.
COVID-19 is a disease caused by a newly identified coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; formerly called 2019-nCoV), which was first identified as an outbreak of respiratory illness cases in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China.
It was initially reported to the WHO on December 31, 2019. On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global health emergency.
The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, administered to millions of children in high risk countries soon after birth to protect against tuberculosis, could be a “game-changer” in the fight against the deadly coronavirus virus, say US scientists.
“We found that countries without universal policies of BCG vaccination, such as Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States, have been more severely affected compared to countries with universal and long-standing BCG policies,” noted the researchers led by Gonzalo Otazu, assistant professor of biomedical sciences at NYIT.