Achieving global herd immunity against COVID-19 through mass vaccination will take two to three years, said China’s top respiratory disease specialist, Zhong Nanshan.
Zhong made the remarks at a conference of the Science Council of Asia held in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province on Thursday, during which he made a speech about China’s COVID-19 prevention and control strategy and vaccine development and shared his views about reaching herd immunity against COVID-19 around the world.
One way to achieve herd immunity is through natural infection (infection without interference), which means 70-80% of people infected and 5% of people die globally, which would be “unrealistic, unscientific and inhumane,” he said.
Mass vaccination is another way to achieve herd immunity and would require global coordination over a period of two to three years, he said.
The epidemiologist presented a set of research data on how high vaccination rates should be in different parts of the world in order to achieve herd immunity.
If vaccine efficacy is 70 percent, then for China, the vaccination rate should reach 83.3 percent of the population, whereas around the world, the rate should be 89.2 percent.
For Asia and Europe, the rates should reach 80.2 and 96.2, respectively.
With a vaccine efficacy of 80 percent, 72.9 percent of people in China should be vaccinated to reach herd immunity, while the figure would be 78 percent for the world, 70.2 percent for Asia and 84.2 percent for Europe, according to the statistics that Zhong presented.
Although China currently leads the world in terms of the number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered, the coverage rate in the country is only about 23%, lagging behind other countries such as Israel, the US and the UK, Zhong noted.
China has administered more than 350 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Wednesday.
Zhong called for herd immunity to be achieved through vaccination as soon as possible to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 on global economic and social development.
“No country is safe until all countries are safe,” he stressed.
Zhong Nanshan Photo:VCG
