Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study

Aaron Miller; Mac Josh Reandelar; Kimberly Fasciglione; Violeta Roumenova; Yan Li; Gonzalo H Otazu

As the numbers of tuberculosis cases dropped in the late 20 th century, several middle high and high-income countries in Europe dropped the universal BCG policy between years 1963 and 2010. We hypothesized that although these countries do not have a universal current vaccination policy, they would also show a trend where the earlier they started their universal policy, the larger fraction of the elderly population would be covered, and the lower the death rate per million people. We analyzed 17 countries that dropped their universal BCG policy. There was also a positive significant correlation (ρ=0.54, p=0.02, linear correlation) between the year of the establishment of universal BCG vaccination and the mortality rate (see Figure 2 , right panel). For instance, Spain started their universal policy in 1965 and lasted until 1981 (16 years) and has a high mortality rate (29.5 deaths per million inhabitants). In contrast, Denmark started their policy in 1946 and ended in 1986 (40 years) and has almost 10 times less deaths per million inhabitants with 2.3 deaths.