ATLANTA, May 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Madagascar is one of several countries in the report MMR Vaccine Appears to Confer Strong Protection from COVID-19: Few Deaths from SARS-CoV-2 in Highly Vaccinated Populations which have had few or no deaths from COVID-19 after large MMR or other measles-rubella containing vaccination programs in recent years.
Madagascar, a country with a population of 27.5 million people, vaccinated 7.2 million (over one quarter of its population) with measles-rubella containing vaccines in 2019. This was in addition to anyone previously vaccinated. Madagascar remains one of only a few countries with zero deaths from COVID-19.
In population after population, anytime a much larger than usual number of people have had the MMR vaccine, there are few and in some cases no deaths from COVID-19. Evidence continues to add up demonstrating that the commonly available MMR vaccine could be the key to stopping the COVID-19 pandemic quickly, allowing much of the world to get back to business as usual within months.
Hong Kong is an example of a population which had extended MMR vaccination campaigns to include many adults. A city with nearly the same population as New York City, and located just over 500 miles from Wuhan where the pandemic began, Hong Kong has seen only four COVID-19 deaths. By contrast, New York City has had 14,753 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 5,178 probable COVID-19 deaths during the same period.
It is not necessary in any one population to vaccinate every individual to eliminate nearly all deaths from COVID-19. Instead, one has to just provide enough coverage so that the effective reproductive number (R) of the virus through each patient is less than 1; this stops the logarithmic progression. A drop in R value below 1 likely explains why populations with high MMR vaccination rates have so few deaths from COVID-19.
Principal investigator Jeff Gold discovered the correlation of MMR vaccination rates to COVID-19 death rates on March 18, 2020. Gold has since evaluated epidemiological data about MMR vaccination programs from dozens of countries, with each correlation verified by co-investigators William H. Baumgartl, MD, MSME, and Larry P. Tilley, Diplomate, ACVIM.
Gold’s MMR vaccine research was first published publicly on March 29, 2020, the same day his findings were forwarded to the National Institute of Health’s COVID-19 Research Team. Corroborating biological evidence was published twelve days later by a team of neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, indicating that rubella is the component of the MMR vaccine active against COVID-19.
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