A promised land where the virus stopped spreading exponentially because enough people were protected against it.
SINGAPORE, Aug 14 : As Covid-19 surged last year, governments worldwide touted the hope of"herd immunity,” a promised land where the virus stopped spreading exponentially because enough people were protected against it. That’s now looking like a fantasy.
This month, the Infectious Diseases Society of America estimated that delta had pushed the threshold for herd immunity to well over 80% and possibly close to 90%. "If it was as simple as getting the infection once means you are immune for life, that would be great, but I don’t think that’s the case,” said S.V. Mahadevan, director of South Asia Outreach at the Center for Asian Health Research and Education at Stanford University Medical Center."That’s a troubling problem.”
Vaccines so far haven’t been the quick fix some had hoped for. Israel, among the most vaccinated countries in the world, has already started administering booster shots, amid evidence that the current immunizations aren’t offering the protection that was hoped. Some countries learned the shortfalls of herd immunity the hard way. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson originally planned to use it as a primary approach to Covid-19, suggesting some of his constituents could"take it on the chin” with natural infections before the magnitude of the damage became apparent.
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