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The director of the World Health Organization warned against deliberately allowing the coronavirus to spread in hopes of achieving so-called herd immunity, saying the idea is unethical.
“Herd immunity is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can protect itself from a certain virus if a vaccination threshold is reached,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a virtual press conference.
For measles, for example, it is estimated that if 95% of the population is vaccinated, the remaining 5% will also be protected from the spread of the virus. For polio, the threshold is estimated at 80%.
“Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not exposing them to it,” Tedros said. “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy to respond to an outbreak, much less a pandemic.”
Covid-19 has killed more than a million people and infected more than 37.5 million since it first appeared in China late last year.
Last week, an international group of scientists called on governments to allow young, healthy people to return to normal life while protecting the most vulnerable. Several supposedly expert signatories to the “Great Barrington Declaration” were later revealed to be false names, but the document once again reflected prominent calls for an effort to develop herd immunity.
Relying on naturally gaining herd immunity would be “scientifically and ethically problematic,” Tedros said. “Allowing a dangerous virus that we do not fully understand to run for free is simply unethical. It is not an option “.
He pointed to the lack of information on the development of immunity to Covid-19, including how strong the immune response is and how long the antibodies remain in the body.
Tedros pointed to some cases in which people are believed to have been infected with the virus a second time. He also highlighted the many long-term health problems of the infection, which researchers are only beginning to understand.
He noted that it is estimated that less than 10% of the population in most countries is believed to have contracted the disease. “The vast majority of people in most countries are still susceptible to this virus,” he said. “Letting the virus circulate uncontrollably means thus allowing unnecessary infection, suffering and death.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead on the virus, said at Monday’s briefing that an estimated 0.6% of people who contract Covid-19 die from the disease.
“It may not sound like much,” he acknowledged, while emphasizing that he was “much taller than [for] influenza. “He noted that” the fatality rate from infection increases dramatically with age.
While older people and people with underlying health conditions are clearly the most likely to get seriously ill from Covid-19, Tedros stressed that they weren’t the only ones at risk. “People of all ages have died,” he said.
The UN agency also expressed optimism about the speed at which vaccines against the virus were being developed, with 40 vaccine candidates in clinical trials, including 10 in late-stage phase 3 trials.
Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that a Covid-19 vaccine will be ready before next month’s US elections. But WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said the vaccines in the later stages of trials were not expected to produce enough data to request regulatory approval until December at the earliest.
“In early 2021, we expect a series of trials to begin providing data for regulators to review,” he said. However, after that, regulators should review the data before making their decisions. “This will be a lot of data, and also for the WHO,” he said.
