The World Health Organization (WHO) warned public officials that achieving herd immunity to fight the coronavirus may overwhelm hospitals and kill people.
Epidemiologists say that herd immunity is important to truly contain a virus. It happens when enough people either get vaccinated or recover from the virus so they can produce the antibodies to protect themselves from new infections. With this, the virus would not have enough new hosts to spread.
Many scientists believe 60% to 80% of the population must be vaccinated or possess natural antibodies to reach herd immunity, said Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, during a a live Q&A streamed across multiple social media platforms. “Whatever that number is, we’re nowhere near close to it, which means this virus has a long way to burn in our communities before we ever reach that,” he stressed.
He warned about the danger of waiting for herd immunity to happen by allowing the coronavirus to spread, as suggested by some opponents of social distancing measures.
“The idea that we would have herd immunity as an objective, in some sense, it goes against controlling the disease because if you were to say, ‘We need to have a herd immunity of 70% and we should let the virus spread until we get to 70%,’ we’ve seen what happens,” he said. “Hospitals get overwhelmed. A lot of people die.”
A multiorgan disease
Ryan stressed that problems may arise even if people do not die from the disease. “Anyone who looks at patients who are severe with Covid realizes this is a very severe, multiorgan disease that stresses many systems in the body, the cardiovascular system, the neurologic system. And we have to assume in milder cases a similar process is happening at a milder level.”
He also said that young people with Covid-19 have recovered and left hospitals healthy, only for problems to resurface 10 or 15 weeks later.
“They can’t run. They can’t exercise, they are out of breath, having coughing fits,” he said. “Who wants or needs that?”
“We have to come to grips that Covid might kill me but it could also debilitate you over a significant period of time. And therefore we have to take it seriously. We have to take protecting ourselves and protecting others seriously,” he said. “At some level, we have the right to potentially risk harm to ourselves. We have no right to risk harm to others.”
According to the data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 16 million people around the world and led to the deaths of at least 660,881. Experts think that is nowhere near the levels required to slow transmission.
Meanwhile, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the coronavirus will not likely ever be eradicated, but leaders and public health officials could bring the infections down to “low levels,” he told the TB Alliance.
“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year. I’m not certain,” he noted.
But, he added, “I don’t really see us eradicating it.”
