Coronavirus

Herd immunity: will the UK's coronavirus strategy work?

   Ministers look to have given up on containment in favour of a novel
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   ones' – video

   Herd immunity is a phrase normally used when large numbers of children
   have been vaccinated against a disease like measles, reducing the
   chances that others will get it. As a tactic in fighting a pandemic for
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   recover will be immune, at least for now, so they won’t get it twice.

   But allowing the population to build up immunity in this way – rather
   than through widespread testing, tracking down the contacts of every
   case and isolating them, as many other countries in Asia and Europe
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   older people with underlying health problems.

   To reach herd immunity, about 60% of the population would need to get
   ill and become immune, according to Sir Patrick Vallance, the
   government’s chief scientific adviser. Though it could need as much as
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   cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they
   basically don’t catch the disease and by the time they come out of
   their cocooning, herd immunity’s been achieved in the rest of the
   population.”

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   But Anthony Costello, a paediatrician and former World Health
   Organization director, said that the UK government was out of kilter
   with other countries in looking to herd immunity as the answer. It
   could conflict with WHO policy, he said in a series of Twitter posts,
   which is to contain the virus by tracking and tracing all cases. He
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   mitigation is wrong and dangerous.”

   Herd immunity might not even last, Costello said. “Does coronavirus
   cause strong herd immunity or is it like flu where new strains emerge
   each year needing repeat vaccines? We have much to learn about Co-V
   immune responses.” Vaccines, he said, were a much safer way of bringing