Britain and the US may be on the cusp of herd immunity by the end of 2021 thanks to their speedy Covid vaccine roll-outs, data suggested today. But forecasters analysing the current pace of the global inoculation drive have warned Germany, France and Italy must rapidly speed up to reach the same threshold. Herd immunity … Read more
What is ‘herd immunity’? Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection. Effectively, it means that once people have some form of immunity, it reduces the ability of a disease to spread among the population. Therefore someone … Read more
Social distancing measures put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic may trigger a resurgence of flu cases next winter, scientists have warned. Experts fear we are likely to face a ‘severe epidemic in the coming months’ once restrictions are fully lifted as levels of immunity are less than they would be typically. It comes … Read more
Johns Hopkins professor Dr Marty Makary has made a bold claim: ‘We’ll have herd immunity by April,’ he wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial. Dr Makary estimates that the U.S. will have herd immunity by then, driven by the high, but underestimated, number of people who have been infected already and vaccination. ‘Some medical … Read more
The US may not reach herd immunity and return to some semblance of normalcy until Thanksgiving at the current pace of COVID-19 vaccinations and speed of variant spread, Biden administration officials told the Daily Beast. That’s far later than the end-of-summer target date by which Dr Anthony Fauci has estimated that American life might get … Read more
Experts say it is possible that the U.S. may achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus as early as July. In a video for MedPage Today, Dr Monica Gandhi, of the University of California San Francisco, said the nation will only be able to curb virus spread between vaccination coverage and natural immunity. There are currently … Read more
London’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is still at risk from coronavirus and has not achieved herd immunity, scientists warned today after a study showed two-thirds were infected by the disease last year. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researchers found 64 per cent had Covid-19 antibodies after testing the blood of 1,750 members of the … Read more
Coronavirus vaccines could be tweaked to spark immunity against new variants in just three weeks, a top scientist has said. Professor Robin Shattock, an Imperial College London scientist who is working on booster shots, said experts could rapidly adapt the current crop of jabs. He added antibodies triggered by jabs based on the old virus … Read more
People who have received their first Covid-19 jab must stay at home for three weeks after their injection because it can take that long for immunity to ‘kick in’, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam warned last night. He said that while getting vaccinated was ‘something to celebrate’, recipients of the jab needed to ‘stay patient’. The caution … Read more
Vaccinating every single person in the UK will still not be enough to achieve herd immunity, a new study claims. Analysis from the University of East Anglia (UEA) found that the efficacy of the currently available vaccines, combined with the emergence of new more infectious strains of the virus, put herd immunity out of reach. … Read more