Covid-19: Experts voice concern at BCG push for elderly

The Indian Council of Medical Research’s plan to inoculate elderly individuals with the BCG vaccine to check its efficacy to protect them from Covid-19 has sparked concern within the scientific community, with some researchers flagging the safety issues associated with such a move.

Since BCG, a live vaccine, would be administered to people in the age group of 60-95 years with co-morbidities, researchers stressed on the importance of gathering safety data first as there is no global experience of the BCG vaccine, normally administered as a shot to infants, in the elderly.

“We have received the required approval from the Tamil Nadu government for starting the trials. The trials will soon begin in Chennai and its neighbouring district of Tiruvallur. Preliminary work has already started,” Dr Manoj Murhekar, director of Chennai-based National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), which will conduct the trials, told DH. NIRT is one of the institutes under the ICMR.

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In addition, trials will also be carried out in Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh in partnership with All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, KEM Hospital in Mumbai and other ICMR institutes.

The NIRT director said the trials were to examine whether administering BCG vaccine on the elderly could reduce the incidence of Covid-19 and mortality rate.

Healthcare workers will conduct camps to identify people who can be part of the trials and the entire process could take up to nine months.

“The screening and recruiting process itself would take three months and once we administer the vaccine on the elderly, we need to monitor them for at least six months. The process would take nine months as a whole. We can say whether this works only after the trials are over,” Murhekar added.

But scientists have expressed concern over the move. “This worries me a lot,” tweeted Dr Madhukar Pai, Director, McGill International TB Centre at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. “Nobody has any experience in giving the live BCG vaccine to elderly people! Without proving safety, no programme should be vaccinating elderly people. There is no direct evidence proving that BCG will reduce Covid-19 mortality.”

“Millions of infants get BCG every year. It is quite safe in this group. But the number of elderly people given BCG is close to zero. BCG is a live vaccine. It should not be given to elderly (who might have comorbidities) without safety data,” he added.

“Such trials should be conducted carefully on a small number of people as people with comorbidities might be in an immuno-compromised state,” said Anant Bhan, researcher, global health, bioethics and health policy and past president of International Association of Bioethics.

Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan told DH that it was a trial and not a “cure”.