On October 12, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) objected to the suggestion of some that Covid-19 should be allowed to spread in the hope of achieving community immunity. This approach is “unethical”, Mr. Tedros said.
“Community immunity is achieved by protecting people from the virus, not by exposing them to it. Community immunity is the mode used in immunization in which people are protected from a virus if the vaccination threshold is reached”, said WHO general manager Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Tedros pointed out that, for measles, for example, if 95% of the population were vaccinated, the remaining 5% would also be protected from the virus. For polio, the threshold of immunity is 80% of the vaccinated population. Community immunity helps protect vulnerable populations such as infants and people with compromised immune systems who cannot get vaccinated.
“Never before in the history of public health, public immunology has been used as a strategy to respond to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic,” Tedros said.
According to Johns Hopkins University, when 70% -90% of people have anti-Covid-19 antibodies, the US can achieve community immunity. However, the United States has not yet reached that level, even though it has so far had more than 8 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 220,000 people have died from the epidemic.
Even once a Covid-19 vaccine is approved, it is still unclear how many people will be willing to be vaccinated. A May poll conducted by AP and the University of Chicago found that only about half of Americans said they would get the Covid-19 vaccine, a third of the uncertain population and 1 / 5 refused vaccination.
“It is still a scientific and ethical ambiguity to rely on natural immunity to the community during a pandemic,” said Tedros. “It is unethical to allow a dangerous virus that we do not understand to spread freely,” stressed the WHO Director-General.
Doctors still have a lot to learn about Covid-19 immunity, including the level of protection of the immune response and how long an antibody stays in the body, the head of the WHO pointed out.
Mr. Tedros estimates that less than 10% of the population is immune to Covid-19, meaning that the majority of people around the world are still at risk.