Is BCG-jab Covid-19's silver bullet? - NYIT's Dr Gonzalo Otazu

With the number of coronavirus cases growing every day across the world; scientists are desperately looking for a silver bullet to stop the disease in its tracks or at least prevent fatalities from it. As the virus is new and moved so fast from China to the rest of the world; scientists are playing a catch-up race and are looking for shreds of evidence that some people may be spared from the full brunt of the epidemic. It did appear that older people were more likely to die from coronavirus complications than the young and judging from how the flu virus mainly effects people in the cold months; scientists are predicting that people in warmer countries like South Africa could expect less severe outbreaks. The higher fatality rate among men has also been ascribed to vaccinations that teenage girls receive to prevent complications when they become pregnant. And now a study by a professor at the New York Institute of Technology, Dr Gonzalu Otazu has found that there is a correlation between countries that require citizens to get the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG vaccine) to prevent tuberculosis and lower death rates from the coronavirus. South Africa has mandated this 100-year old vaccine since the 1940s and many will remember it as a stamp on the upper arm. This is clearly good news for South Africa where the infection rate and death rate are still relatively low compared to outbreaks in Italy and the United States. In the UK, BCG vaccines are only administered to people who travel to high risk areas and in some pockets in London. Dr Otazu told Biznews founder Alec on the Inside Covid-19 podcast that clinical trials need to be done to find out if there is indeed a causal relationship between the BCG jab and low Covid-19 fatality rates. This is not an indication that South Africans should become less cautious as he emphasised the importance of combining it with social distancing and many HIV/Aids patients do not receive this vaccination. – Linda van Tilburg