Professor Francisco Antunes explains BCG's relationship with Covid-19 on CMTV

News emerged a few days ago that populations, whose vaccination programme includes the bacillus Calmette – Guérin (BCG) vaccine, would eventually be protected against the more aggressive effects of the infection caused by the new coronavirus.

Regarding this issue, Professor Francisco Antunes says that this information is purely speculative, but points out that there are differences with regard to the severity of cases and the mortality rate in countries that have had a BCG mass vaccination.

In Portugal, this vaccine became mandatory in 1965.

What is known is that BCG, on the one hand, attenuates the inflammatory process, and, on the other hand, offers protection against tuberculosis, so one cannot fail to pay attention to the relationship between BCG and some protective effects against this new coronavirus. According to the Professor, we must be vigilant. Still, what we have currently available is social distance and hand washing, at the moment the most effective measures.

There are studies that demonstrate that this vaccine attenuates the inflammatory process that lies at the origin of lung disease. If this is proven, it reduces the evolution of the disease from less severe cases to more severe ones.

There are prospects for conducting studies aimed, in particular, at the most susceptible population and health professionals, but this vaccine is not a vaccine against covid-19.

You can watch the intervention of Professor Francisco Antunes in full  here