Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
October 19, 2020
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Infection-Based Herd Immunity as Policy
An infection-based herd immunity approach (ie, letting the low-risk groups become infected while “sequestering” the susceptible groups) has been proposed to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, such a strategy is fraught with risks. For example, even with modest infection fatality ratios, a new pathogen will result in substantial mortality because most, if not all, of the population would not have immunity to the pathogen. Sequestering the high-risk populations is impractical because infections that initially transmit in low-mortality populations can spread to high-mortality populations. Moreover, so far, there is no example of a large-scale successful intentional infection-based herd immunity strategy.
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Conclusions
Herd immunity is an important defense against outbreaks and has shown success in regions with satisfactory vaccination rates. Importantly, even small deviations from protective levels can allow for significant outbreaks due to local clusters of susceptible individuals, as has been seen with measles over the past few years. Therefore, vaccines must not only be effective, but vaccination programs must be efficient and broadly adopted to ensure that those who cannot be directly protected will nonetheless derive relative protections.
..............................................................................
Infection-Based Herd Immunity as Policy
An infection-based herd immunity approach (ie, letting the low-risk groups become infected while “sequestering” the susceptible groups) has been proposed to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, such a strategy is fraught with risks. For example, even with modest infection fatality ratios, a new pathogen will result in substantial mortality because most, if not all, of the population would not have immunity to the pathogen. Sequestering the high-risk populations is impractical because infections that initially transmit in low-mortality populations can spread to high-mortality populations. Moreover, so far, there is no example of a large-scale successful intentional infection-based herd immunity strategy.
.....................................................................................
Conclusions
Herd immunity is an important defense against outbreaks and has shown success in regions with satisfactory vaccination rates. Importantly, even small deviations from protective levels can allow for significant outbreaks due to local clusters of susceptible individuals, as has been seen with measles over the past few years. Therefore, vaccines must not only be effective, but vaccination programs must be efficient and broadly adopted to ensure that those who cannot be directly protected will nonetheless derive relative protections.
