Albert Ko at the Yale School of Public Health and others offer guidance.
The U.K. government signaled that it might be considering a different approach to coronavirus control than the rest of the world — in essence, allowing a large percentage of the population to become infected in order to develop a “herd immunity” that would eventually end the epidemic.
Herd immunity occurs when enough people in a population are immune to disease — either because they’ve been infected and recovered or they’ve been vaccinated against it. The idea is that the pool of people who can catch the disease has been reduced, reducing the risk to the so-far unaffected.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the U.K. government’s chief scientific adviser, said that about 60% of the population would need to get the coronavirus in order to get a herd immunity effect.
But using such an approach would raise a big question: During that spread, how do you protect the most vulnerable groups – the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions?
Herd immunity works with contagious diseases like measles, for which a vaccine exists. But the idea that the U.K. would not immediately work to suppress the number of cases, especially as there are no approved treatments for COVID-19 yet and the disease has killed thousands in Italy, stirred an immediate public backlash.
The government quickly backtracked, and on Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said all restaurants, pubs and gyms would close for the foreseeable future to reduce transmission.
And there is no certainty that herd immunity would even work for coronavirus. That approach “assumes that people being infected are immune and cannot get re-infected. And we don’t know that as of yet,” says Albert Ko, professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Yale School of Public Health.
More Stories
How many people died from the 14th century black death?
Why is washing your hands a must?
Can I prepare a DIY surface disinfectant against COVID-19?