Executive Summary – Chloe Mitchell
Chloe Mitchell is a first-year student majoring in Biochemistry. She wrote this summary of the academic article “BCG Vaccine Protection from Severe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)” for Professor Jill Schweitzer’s BIOL-L 102 class in Fall 2020. Professor Schweitzer comments that Chloe “summarized her research article clearly and accurately. She demonstrated a commitment to understanding the research study thoroughly.”
Executive Summary
Primary paper citation (APA style):
Escobar, L. E., Molina-Cruz, A., & Barillas-Mury, C. (2020). BCG vaccine protection from severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(30), 17720–17726.
Introduction
This article discusses how the bacillus Calmette−Guérin (BCG) vaccine can offer cross-protection against COVID-19. Scientists know that the BCG vaccine can protect children from respiratory illnesses. The BCG vaccine has been around for 90 years and scientists want to see if countries that have a BCG vaccination program experience lower COVID-19 death rates. To understand vaccines, one must be knowledgeable in biology. We are currently learning about viruses and vaccines in class. Vaccines prevent viruses and other pathogens from infecting many healthy cells. Viruses will trick our healthy cells into producing more of the virus. The healthy cells with that have been treated with the vaccine will recognize that the virus is bad and needs to be destroyed. The cells develop antibodies against the virus which helps cells prevent the virus from infecting other healthy cells.
Methods
The scientists hypothesized that countries without a national BCG vaccination program would have greater COVID-19 mortality in adult populations than countries that have a program. Statistics tests were used to complete the experiment. Scientists gathered the number of COVID-19 deaths for each country from the beginning of the outbreak to April 20, 2020. The scientist considered the confounding variables when analyzing the collected data which included various characteristics of each country’s population. Scientists also had to factor in the size of each country’s population and when the outbreak happened in each country to the analysis. It is important that these factors are contemplated so the various countries’ data can be compared to each other which will generate reliable results.
Results
The experiment supports the scientists’ hypothesis. The statistics tests revealed that countries that nationally implement the BCG vaccine have lower COVID-19 related death rates. The study revealed that the BCG vaccine can reduce COVID-19 mortality by 10.4%. The results also indicate that a country’s Human Development Index (HDI) value affects the amount of COVID-19 related deaths. The HDI is a value assigned to each country that evaluates the population’s access to healthcare, education, and their overall standards of living. A higher HDI indicates that the country is more developed. If the country’s HDI value is high, then their COVID-19 related death rate is going to be high.
Future Directions:
Scientists now know that the BCG vaccine lowered COVID-19 death rates in various countries. Moving forward, scientists should look at cases of COVID-19 to see if there is any protective effect of the BCG vaccine in preventing cases of COVID-19. The BCG vaccine should be administered to volunteers. It will be appropriate to use COVID-19 case numbers instead of COVID-19 deaths because testing has really evolved. Scientists should record the number of COVID-19 cases and be looking for a decrease over time. The amount of cases may be underreported. This would indicate that the BCG vaccine offers protection from COVID-19.