{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,18]],"date-time":"2026-05-18T07:09:04Z","timestamp":1779088144008,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":13,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,26]],"date-time":"2020-05-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1590451200000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,26]],"date-time":"2020-05-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1590451200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["EMBO Mol Med"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,8]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>\n                    The ongoing severe acute respiratory sickness coronavirus 2 (SARS\u2010CoV\u20102) pandemic has resulted in more than 3,600,000 detected cases of COVID\u201019 illness and nearly 260,000 deaths worldwide as of May 6, 2020. Recently, BCG vaccination was shown to correlate with reduced COVID\u201019 case fatality rates (preprint: Miller\n                    <jats:italic>et\u00a0al<\/jats:italic>\n                    , 2020; preprint: Sala &amp; Miyakawa, 2020;\n                    <jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" xlink:href=\"https:\/\/www.jsatonotes.com\/2020\/03\/if-i-were-north-americaneuropeanaustral.html\" ext-link-type=\"uri\">https:\/\/www.jsatonotes.com\/2020\/03\/if-i-were-north-americaneuropeanaustral.html<\/jats:ext-link>\n                    ). The most recent data from publicly available resources also indicate that both COVID\u201019 incidence and total deaths are strongly associated with the presence or absence of national mandatory BCG vaccination programs. As seen in Table\u00a01, seven of eight countries with very low numbers of total deaths (&lt;\u00a040 per 1\u00a0million population) adopted a mandatory BCG vaccination program using one of a set of 6 separate BCG strains (Table\u00a01). In contrast, COVID\u201019 mortality was markedly higher in countries where BCG vaccination is not widely administered or is given only to high\u2010risk groups. COVID\u201019 mortality was also higher in countries where widespread BCG vaccination was discontinued more than 20\u00a0years ago and in countries that used the BCG Denmark strain regularly or temporarily. This raises the question of whether BCG vaccination and reduced COVID\u201019 mortality are causally related. An additional question is why different BCG strains may be variably associated with mortality.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.15252\/emmm.202012661","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,7]],"date-time":"2020-05-07T16:10:19Z","timestamp":1588867819000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":85,"title":["Is BCG vaccination causally related to reduced COVID\u201019 mortality?"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6122-5201","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Masayuki","family":"Miyasaka","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"BFEMMM202012661_CR1","first-page":"915915","volume":"17","author":"MA Behr","year":"1999","unstructured":"Behr MA, Small PM (1999) A historical and molecular phylogeny of BCG strains. 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