Modeling studies have recently revealed that about 60 to 70 per cent of the global population needs to be immune to control or halt Covid-19 virus transmission, said a World Health Organization (WHO) official.
“The WHO cannot give the exact number of the proportion of the population that would need to be inoculated”, Katherine O’Brien, director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, said at a virtual briefing on Friday. “The answer to this can come from modeling studies”, he added.
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Interruption of covid-19 virus transmission
“These modeling studies under a variety of conditions have concluded that about 60 to 70 per cent of the population would need to be immune, presumably through immunization, in order to achieve a reduction or an interruption of transmission of the virus. “That’s of course predicated on what the performance of the vaccines would be,” she added.
This comment came after the overall number of global coronavirus cases has topped 61.5 million, while the number of deaths has surged to more than 1.44 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
Countries needs to stay ‘vigilant’
In the same virtual briefing on Friday, Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said that countries with decreasing Covid-19 numbers still need to stay “vigilant”.
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“Even as case numbers are coming down, all countries need to remain vigilant. You’ve heard of this before, but we really need to emphasize it again. Do not let your guard down.
“It’s good to see the measures taking effect and transmission going down. But it’s not time to let up. It’s time to even scale up.
“What we don’t want to see in situations where you are moving from a so-called lockdown state to bring the virus under control to moving to a so-called lockdown state,” she added.
