African Journal of Respiratory Medicine received 820 citations as per google scholar report
The currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has driven an urgent need to develop treatments and preventative measures against this phenomenon, particularly given the devastation that the ongoing situation has wrought on the global economics, medical, and social arenas. This dire situ- ation has driven a monumental global effort has to urgently produce suitable vaccines to prevent and stem COVID-19. However, there remains a lack of consensus as to what constitutes a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine strategy, with current trials not designed to detect a reduction in the likelihood of severe illness and stemming of disease trans- mission. Critically, however, most indicators suggest that millions of high-risk individuals will not gain access to vaccines any time soon (persons ≥ 65 years of age, persons with underlying conditions, the economically deprived, and various ethnic minorities). Considering such concerns, per- haps deployment of existing vaccinations with document- ed results could be deployed to assist in interim efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19. Some vaccines such as the Bacilli-Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine may confer non-spe- cific protection or effects (NSE) against disease other than its intended target. In this article, we discuss recent efforts to investigate how such approaches may be beneficial and present our hypothesis that such non-specific events of simi- lar vaccines may assist in prevention of severe disease while specific COVID-19 vaccines are further developed and made available to the most high-risk individuals.
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