Empirical assessment of bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine to combat COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has become one of the critical health issues globally, which surfaced first in latter part of the year 2019. It is the topmost concern for many nations' governments as the contagious virus started mushrooming over adjacent regions of infected areas. In 1980, a vaccine called Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) was introduced for preventing tuberculosis and lung cancer. Countries that have made the BCG vaccine mandatory have witnessed a lesser COVID-19 fatality rate than the countries that have not made it compulsory. This paper's initial research shows that the countries with a long-term compulsory BCG vaccination system are less affected by COVID-19 than those without a BCG vaccination system. This paper discusses analytical data patterns for medical applications regarding COVID-19 impact on countries with mandatory BCG status on fatality rates. The paper has tackled numerous analytical challenges to realize the full potential of heterogeneous data. An analogy is drawn to demonstrate how other factors can affect fatality and infection rates other than BCG vaccination only, such as age groups affected, other diseases, and stringency index. The data of Spain, Portugal, and Germany have been taken for a case study of BCG impact analysis.