Vaccines generally raise immune responses specific to a targeted pathogen, such as antibodies that bind and neutralize one type of virus but not others. But BCG may also increase the ability of the immune system to fight off pathogens other than the TB bacterium, according to clinical and observational studies published over several decades by Danish researchers Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn, who live and work in Guinea-Bissau. They concluded the vaccine prevents about 30% of infections with any known pathogen, including viruses, in the first year after it’s given. The studies published in this field have been criticized for their methodology, however; a 2014 review ordered by the World Health Organization concluded that BCG appeared to lower overall mortality in children, but rated confidence in the findings as “very low.” A 2016 review was a bit more positive about BCG’s potential benefits but said randomized trials were needed.

Since then, the clinical evidence has strengthened and several groups have made important steps investigating how BCG may generally boost the immune system. Mihai Netea, an infectious disease specialist at Radboud University Medical Center, discovered that the vaccine may defy textbook knowledge of how immunity works.

Update: ‘A bit chaotic.’ Christening of new coronavirus and its disease name create confusion
- COVID-19 is a name for the disease, not for the virus that causes it, which until now had a temporary moniker, 2019-nCoV, signifying it was a novel coronavirus that emerged last year. But the pathogen also got a new designation, which arrived before Tedros had even finished his press conference, by way of a preprint posted on bioRxiv by the body charged with classifying and naming viruses. The Coronavirus Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, the paper noted, had decided that the virus is a variant of the coronavirus that caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002–03. So, it named the new pathogen severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.

But that’s not a name WHO is happy with, and the agency isn’t planning on adopting it. “From a risk communications perspective, using the name SARS can have unintended consequences in terms of creating unnecessary fear for some populations, especially in Asia which was worst affected by the SARS outbreak in 2003,” a WHO spokesperson wrote in an email to Science. “For that reason and others, in public communications WHO will refer to 'the virus responsible for COVID-19' or 'the COVID-19 virus,' but neither of these designations is intended as replacements for the official name of the virus" that the study group has picked. -

- It wouldn’t be the first time a virus and a disease have different names: the variola virus causes smallpox, for instance, and AIDS is caused by HIV.

Ziebuhr says WHO has informed him that the name doesn’t sit well with China, which has resisted any comparisons between the current crisis and traumatic SARS epidemic, which also emerged first in that country—if only because the new virus appears to have a lower mortality rate and far more often causes mild disease. “It’s important to make clear that this name is not a reference to the disease this virus causes. There is no link between the name and the disease SARS. That’s the difficulty that WHO is facing,” Ziebuhr says. He points out that hundreds of other viruses found in bats and other animals—many by Chinese researchers—all carry the same species name as well. -