“The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission,” says the Head of Oxford Vaccine Group.
Herd immunity cannot be achieved with the current Delta variant, according to the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group. Prof Sir Andrew Pollard told MPs on Tuesday that the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant that reaching the population’s threshold for overall immunity was “mythical.”
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“The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population,” he told the coronavirus all-party parliamentary group(APPG).
“The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission.”
The current vaccines are very effective in preventing serious Covid illness and death, but they do not prevent a fully vaccinated person from contracting Covid-19.
For the unvaccinated and those who have never been infected, herd immunity provides indirect protection from an infectious disease.
According to a recent React study by Imperial College London, fully vaccinated people aged 18 to 64 have a 49% lower risk of infection than unvaccinated people. The study also found that fully vaccinated people were three times less likely to test positive after contact with Covid (3.84 percent, down from 7.23 percent).
Around 75% of UK adults have now had both jabs.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, announced on Tuesday that the most vulnerable groups in the UK will begin receiving Covid boosters next month. He said the flu shot would be given concurrently.
The JCVI committee chair, Pollard, questions the need for boosters.
“The time we would need to boost is if we see evidence that there was an increase in hospitalisation – or the next stage after that, which would be people dying – amongst those who are vaccinated. And that is not something we are seeing at the moment,” he said.
It’s likely that our immune systems would remember the vaccination for decades and provide some protection if we were exposed to the virus, he said.
“So, there isn’t any reason at this moment to panic. We’re not seeing a problem with breakthrough severe disease.”
The debate over whether or not to vaccinate under-16s, as countries such as the United States, Ireland, and Israel have done, has sparked scientific debate in the United Kingdom as well.
According to the JCVI, only vulnerable children aged 12 to 15 should be vaccinated. Some critics argue that wealthy nations like the UK should not hoard vaccine doses for children but rather donate them to poor nations that have barely vaccinated their most vulnerable populations.
But, as Prof Devi Sridhar of the University of Edinburgh pointed out, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was the only one approved for use in children aged 12 to 15.
“I think actually the real issue is not about vaccinating kids versus the world – it’s what do we do about boosters that is being discussed in rich countries, because those are the doses that could be going abroad,” she said.
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“Luckily … we have a very effective vaccine in AstraZeneca that can be used for the world, but it’s not going to solve our children issue here.”
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