We can Make Herd Immunity with Delta Variant; Know It From Expert

We can Make Herd Immunity with Delta Variant; Know It From Expert.

The director of the UK’s Oxford Vaccine Group warned that the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid has raised the possibility of herd immunity, where the majority of a country’s population becomes immune to a virus.

“The problem with this virus is not measles. If 95 percent of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot be transmitted in the population, ”explained Professor Pollard during the online evidence session.

“The Delta variant will continue to infect people who have been vaccinated. And that means that anyone who is not yet vaccinated will at some point come across the virus. We have nothing to stop transmission, so I think we are in a situation where herd immunity is not a possibility and I suspect that the virus will shed a new variant that is even better at infecting vaccinated people, “he said.

Professor Andrew Pollard, who led the team behind the Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine, told the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Coronavirus on Tuesday that the fear of another, even more transmissible variant remains a possibility and therefore there is nothing that can. completely stop the spread of the deadly virus.

However, he also said there was no cause for “panic” as he expressed doubts about the third booster dose of vaccines proposed by the UK government.

Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia and an expert on infectious diseases, echoed this, who also highlighted that the vaccines currently being administered are very effective in preventing severe COVID-19 and death, but not they can prevent infections completely.

“The concept of herd immunity is unattainable because we know that infection will spread in unvaccinated populations and the most recent data suggests that two doses are probably only 50 percent protective against infection,” Hunter said.

Meanwhile, experts also weighed in on UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s plans to start offering higher-risk groups a third booster shot of a COVID vaccine alongside a flu shot starting in June. next month.

“The time that we would have to increase is if we see evidence that there was an increase in hospitalization, or the next stage after that, which would be people dying, among those who are vaccinated. And that’s not something we’re looking at right now, ”said Prof. Pollard.

“Even when immunity levels start to decline, our immune system still remembers that we were vaccinated and we will be remembered decades from now that we have those two doses of vaccine. So there is no reason at this point to panic, ”he said, adding that doses should“ go where they can have the greatest impact ”in unvaccinated parts of the world.