Tamil Nadu to conduct BCG vaccine trials on elderly to reduce Covid-19 incidence

Tamil Nadu on Wednesday announced that it will soon launch a trial to study the efficacy of the inexpensive and much-used anti-tuberculosis vaccine, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), in people belonging to the age group of 60 to 95 in the fight against novel coronavirus.

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The government said the trials will be conducted at the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) in this metropolis and sanction for the same has been accorded.

The Tamil Nadu government’s announcements comes on the heels of independent studies suggesting that the BCG vaccine, which is widely used in countries like India as part of their fight against tuberculosis (TB), is found to be effective in reducing the incidence of Covid-19 and the mortality rate.

The BCG vaccine has been an integral part of India’s immunisation programmee for the past several decades. Health Minister C Vijayabhaskar said the BCG vaccine is found to be playing a role in increasing innate immunity and there are chances of reducing morbidity and mortality if the vaccine is administered to people in the age of 60 to 95 years.

“Since there is no appropriate drug to treat Covid-19, the ICMR had sought the Tamil Nadu government’s permission to study the efficacy of the vaccine in the elderly and Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has given his consent immediately for the trials. The National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis would begin the trials very soon,” Vijayabhaskar said in the statement.

The government feels the vaccine would help reduce the incidence of Covid-19 in elderly and bring down the mortality rate, but experts are not convinced. Dr Ram Gopalakrishnan, Infectious Diseases Specialist at the Apollo Hospitals here, said it was only a hope that the vaccine would help in the fight against Covid-19 as there is no scientific study to suggest it actually does.

“There is a claim that countries that use the vaccine had low prevalence of Covid, but India and Brazil, who use the vaccine have huge number of cases. There is no scientific basis to the claim, and it is fine if the government does a proper trial across a large population in the country. But they should not sound recommending it now,” Dr Ram Gopalakrishnan told DH.

A leading pulmonologist based out of the city also concurred that BCG vaccine might not really help the elderly. “It is a controversial subject and we really do not know whether BCG vaccine can increase immunity in elders. This is only an hypothesis and difficult to answer whether it will reduce the prevalence of Covid-19,” he told DH.