‘Not Realistic’: Denmark, Iceland Say Vaccination Has Not Led to Herd Immunity
by Sputnik News
Francesco Abbruzzino, The Uncensored Report, LLC
Before the emergence of more contagious coronavirus variants, estimates placed the threshold for herd immunity at between 60 to 70 percent of the population. Yet, the growing dominance of the Delta strain, which is also more adept at dodging vaccines, has challenged this calculation based on high vaccination rates.
With the onslaught of the more contagious Delta strain, the State Serum Institute, Denmark’s infectious diseases agency, has said it no longer believes it will be possible to achieve herd immunity through vaccination, implying that COVID-19 could circulate for years to come.
“It is not realistic to achieve herd immunity, understood as meaning that we will not see any spread of infection at all”, SSI’s acting academic director Tyra Grove Krause told the newspaper BT.
Herd immunity means that enough people are immune to infection from an illness that its reproduction number or R-rate (the number of people each infected person infects) falls below one, without any other anti-infection measures in place.
Before the emergence of more contagious variants such as the Alpha and Delta strains, estimates placed the threshold for herd immunity at between 60 to 70 percent of the population. However, the growing dominance of the Delta strain, which is also more apt at infecting people who are vaccinated, has challenged this calculus.