Geneva: The Director of Immunisation at World Health Organisation, Dr. Katherine O’Brien, said today that it was not yet known exactly what percentage of the population should be immunised worldwide to achieve herd immunity.
Echoing her views, the Director of Health Emergencies of the WHO, Dr. Michael Ryan, said: “We hope that vaccination will help control the transmission of the virus, but until we know how they work in real life or we have more details about how the virus is transmitted, we cannot think that with the arrival of vaccines the virus will be eradicated.”
Emphasising that testing was “vital”, Dr. O’Brien further told media persons here: “There are studies that suggest that it would be necessary that between 60 and 70 percent of the population would have to be immune to the virus so that transmission is effectively interrupted, although all this will depend on the effectiveness of the vaccines and that is why it is very important to gather more information on the effects that they will have both to protect a person and to interrupt transmission.”
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, advised countries to carry out test and recalled that those countries that performed the most tests on the population best controlled the COVID-19 transmission.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, WHO has emphasised the importance of testing, and provided the tools for countries to do it. As vaccines are rolled out, testing will continue to play a vital role.If you don’t know where the virus is, you can’t stop it,” he said.
He pointed out that COVID-19 was an uneven pandemic as almost half of all cases and deaths were reported in just four countries, and almost 70% of cases and deaths were in the top 10 countries.
“And there are many countries all over the world that have shown COVID-19 can be controlled with existing tools. One of the things all these countries have in common is an emphasis on testing,” he reiterated.
– globalbihari bureau
