The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented situation worldwide, causing millions of deaths and significant damage to the world economy. For more than a year, people have heard and hoped for herd immunity that may be achievable in the long-term with near-universal vaccination. Do the low infection rates around the world suggest that COVID-19 herd immunity is just around the corner?
It's been more than a year since the world first encountered the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus. The resilient coronavirus has managed to proliferate and spread across communities despite social distancing measures and other precautions to stop transmission. Now that multiple COVID-19 vaccines have been authorized and rolled out for use, people are positive about developing "herd immunity". According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, herd immunity refers to the sufficient proportion of the population that become immune to a particular disease due to the development of antibodies either from vaccination, or previously contracting the disease.
If majority of the population becomes immune after vaccination, they would not be able to spread the infection further to vulnerable population. Thus, herd immunity ensures the protection of the remaining population and reduces the risks of transmission. Developing herd immunity seems like a practical solution for a fight against COVID-19 infection and therefore vaccine inoculation drives are at full swing. There isn't any "magic threshold" but, usually 50-90% population needs immunity before the infection rates start to decline, however the number can vary depending on how contagious the virus is. For COVID-19, the herd immunity is estimated to be between 70-90%, given that the immunity lasts longer.
How Can We Achieve Herd Immunity with SARS-CoV-2?
While wearing masks in public, social distancing, and reducing the level of interaction can help to slow down the infection rates, the virus might mutate as communities open up broadly and become even more contagious. However, there are two ways to achieve herd immunity, either the large proportion of the population gets vaccinated or infected with the virus. Achieving herd immunity in the United States would require more than 230 million Americans to get infected. However, this could lead to more hospitalization, ICU admissions, and cost millions of lives. The patients who suffer from mild infection might also have severe illness for weeks or other long-term side-effects. Therefore, achieving herd immunity through infection becomes painfully ill-conceived thought.
Another way to achieve a herd-immunity threshold is through high vaccination rates, immunizing mass population so that the society could return to normalcy. Vaccine inoculation to 70-80% of the population for COVID-19 virus will not only protect the vulnerable populations at high risks but also extend the immunization benefits beyond the directly targeted population. Some of the vulnerable groups that depend on herd immunity for achieving protection against the diseases include:
• People with compromised immune functioning
• People on chemotherapy treatments
• People suffering from HIV
• New-borns and infants
• Elderly people
Why is Vaccine Equity Essential to Develop Herd Immunity?
While more than 1.65 billion doses of vaccines have been administered in rich nations, only 0.8% of all vaccines have been allocated to poor countries. Wealthy nations have focused more on securing vaccines for their populations while ignoring to make investments in cooperative initiatives for fair distribution of vaccines across the globe. However, the global coverage of vaccines is imperative to manage the transmission of COVID-19. The imbalance is creating a need to move past beyond outdated charitable models and instead focus on amplifying the manufacturing and distribution capacity throughout the world in order to increase immunization.
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