Spurious early ecological association suggesting BCG vaccination effectiveness for COVID-19.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Several ecologic studies have suggested that the bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine may be protective against SARS-CoV-2 infection including a highly-cited published pre-print by Miller et al., finding that middle/high- and high-income countries that never had a universal BCG policy experienced higher COVID-19 burden compared to countries that currently have universal BCG vaccination policies. We provide a case study of the limitations of ecologic analyses by evaluating whether these early ecologic findings persisted as the pandemic progressed.

Methods

Similar to Miller et al., we employed Wilcoxon Rank Sum Tests to compare population medians in COVID-19 mortality, incidence, and mortality-to-incidence ratio between countries with universal BCG policies compar

SUBMITTER: Ledesma JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9488757 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature