Coronavirus: what if vaccines aren’t enough for herd immunity?
- Production problems for Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca give an inkling of the difficulties ahead as countries try to vaccinate their way to freedom
- Some experts warn it is ‘wholly unrealistic’ to expect herd immunity in the foreseeable future. Others say Covid-19 may never be eradicated
The grim milestones of 100 million infections and 2 million deaths may have been passed, but along with the vaccines comes the hope of herd immunity, a future world in which Covid-19 has been slowly throttled out of existence as it runs out of hosts to infect.
Or at least that’s one rosy scenario. Unfortunately, experts are warning it may be a little too rosy.
Another scenario, offered by Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergencies programme, is that vaccine coverage will not be enough to stop transmission of the virus, at least not for the “foreseeable future”. Some experts go even further, cautioning the virus may never be eradicated.
The “bar for success” according to Ryan, is not herd immunity but “reducing the capacity of this virus to kill, to put people in hospital, to destroy our economic and social lives”.
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Production and distribution delays at major vaccine producers including Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca, along with the news the European Union is considering tightening export restrictions on vaccines made in the bloc, have raised concerns over whether even the world’s richest countries will meet their vaccination targets. The European Union, Canada and Singapore were all hit by Pfizer’s announcement that shipments would be delayed due to an upgrade of a factory in Belgium, while the EU took a second blow when AstraZeneca said its first-quarter deliveries would be cut by more than half due to production problems.
