Research Projects

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused a great loss of lives as well as affected economies in several countries. Countries with lower cases of tuberculosis and higher cases of flu have a significant correlation with respect to COVID-19 deaths. In fact, countries with high BCG vaccination coverage show a significant negative correlation with COVID-19 deaths. It appears that high numbers of flu infections are protective and can decrease the number of COVID-19 deaths. Importantly, countries with high flu cases and BCG vaccination, such as India, Egypt, South Africa etc, show relatively lower COVID-19 deaths, reinforcing the protective roles of BCG vaccination. Notably, these general trends are statistically significant for COVID-19 deaths but not COVID-19 incidences. The implications of our results are discussed with respect to the roles of microbial infections in the respiratory tract, vaccinations and other factors in lowering COVID-19 deaths.