We can learn about the spread of diseases through populations by studying naturally occurring instances of herd immunity. Avian cholera in the Canadian Arctic provides a useful case study.
One university is showing how the vaccine corps concept can speed up vaccination rates, including launching a large-scale vaccination site staffed by hundreds of students and volunteers.
Getting a vaccine is proving difficult for many older people now, but the mad rush for the vaccine won’t last long. Many people don’t want to get one at all, and that will impede herd immunity.
Vaccine hesitancy has resulted in multiple vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. Research on vaccine hesitancy in South Africa is limited. But growing evidence suggests that it’s becoming a problem.
Australia’s expedited plan to start dishing out COVID jabs in mid-late February will call for NASA-like logistical organisation. And ideally, no more clusters of infections to distract frontline workers.
Researchers say around 70% of the US needs to get the coronavirus vaccine to stop the pandemic. But questions around the vaccines and regional differences add some uncertainty to that estimate.
Black people are skeptical about the new vaccines for many reasons. If public health leaders told the full story, maybe there’d be a higher chance that Black people would want to take the vaccine.
Employers could require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 via both workplace policies and existing laws. Neither option, however, is simple or straightforward.
So, if you have ever tested positive, there is a chance you could contract the virus again. And you could infect other people. You should still take the necessary precautions.
If supplies of COVID-19 vaccine are initially limited, who should be vaccinated first? A mathematical model shows when and why it’s best to start with the young, and when older people should go first.
Two pharma companies have announced early COVID-19 vaccine trial results with over 90 per cent effectiveness. What does that mean for getting back to normal?
The Great Barrington Declaration’s advocacy for naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 amounts to a global chickenpox party: naive and dangerous.
Some have suggested the US allow healthy people to return to normal life, catch the coronavirus and get the population to herd immunity. The science says this plan is doomed to fail from the start.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand