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The chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that even as numerous countries begin to implement vaccination programs to stop COVID-19, herd immunity is highly unlikely this year.
In a press conference on January 11, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said that they were critical countries and that their populations were maintaining strict social distancing and other outbreak control measures for the foreseeable future.
In recent weeks, Britain, the United States, France, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and others have started vaccinating millions of their citizens against the coronavirus.
“Even when vaccines start to protect the most vulnerable, we are not going to achieve any level of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021,” said Dr. Swaminathan. “Even if it happens in a couple of pockets, in some countries, it won’t protect people around the world.” Scientists typically estimate that a vaccination rate of around 70% is needed for herd immunity, where entire populations are protected against disease. But some fear that the extremely infectious nature of COVID-19 could require a significantly higher threshold.
Dr Bruce Aylward, adviser to the WHO director-general, said the UN health agency hoped that vaccinations against the coronavirus could start later this month or in February in some of the world’s poorest countries, and called on the world community to do more to ensure that all countries have access to vaccines.
“We can’t do that on our own,” said Dr. Aylward, saying that WHO needed the cooperation of vaccine manufacturers in particular to begin immunizing vulnerable populations.
Dr Aylward said the WHO aimed to have “an implementation plan” detailing which developing countries could start receiving vaccines next month.
Still, rich countries have already bought most of the world’s supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
The UN-backed initiative known as COVAX, which aims to deliver vaccines to developing countries, lacks vaccines, money, and logistical aid as donor countries struggle to protect their own citizens, particularly in the wake of COVID variants. -19 recently detected in Great Britain. and South Africa, which many officials blame for further spread.
The WHO, however, said that most of the recent spikes in transmission were due to “increased mixing of people” rather than new variants.
The WHO technical leader on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said the increase in cases in numerous countries was detected before the new variants were identified. Ms Van Kerkhove noted that during the summer, COVID-19 cases fell to single digits in most countries in Europe.
“We lost the battle because we changed our mixing patterns during the summer, fall and especially around Christmas and New Years,” he said, explaining that many people had multiple contacts with family and friends over the holidays.
“That has had a direct impact on the exponential growth that you have seen in many countries,” he said, describing the increase in the case count in some places as “vertical.”
Dr Michael Ryan, WHO chief of emergencies, said that while there is some evidence that the variants may be accelerating the spread of COVID-19, “there is no evidence that the variants are driving any element of gravity.”
He said the variants should not alter countries’ strategies to control outbreaks.
“It doesn’t change what you do, but it does give the virus some new energy,” Dr. Ryan said.
