Tag: herd immunity

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Herd Immunity May Not Be Achievable In US

(photo: Anna Shvets/Pexels)
Medical experts have said that the goal in defeating the coronavirus in the U.S. would be to achieve ‘herd immunity’ – when some 80 percent of Americans would be protected from the virus via natural infection or vaccines. Now, with vaccination rates slowing down, health officials aren’t sure we’ll actually reach that level. From the New York Times:

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves.

It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

Medical experts originally thought 60-70 percent of Americans getting vaccinated would get us to herd immunity, but they’ve upped that estimate to 80 percent due to the new variants of the virus spreading. Polls show nearly 30 percent of Americans have no plans to get vaccinated. Read the full article here.

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100 Million Americans Fully Vaccinated Against COVID

Vials of COVID-19 vaccine

Vials of COVID-19 vaccine White House coronavirus response director Jeff Zients announced today that over 100 million Americans are now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. From CNN:

The news comes as CNN reported that Biden’s coronavirus advisers are moving into the next phase of their response, from ramping up availability of Covid-19 vaccines to reaching those who have not yet gotten the shot.

White House officials have three overarching goals for the next 100 days: increasing accessibility, combating misinformation and assisting those without the resources to get vaccinated.

The US has administered approximately 237 million shots of the three Covid-19 vaccines as of Friday morning, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With 330 million people in the United States, medical experts say the minimum needed in order to reach the goal of ‘herd immunity’ is 70 percent or 231 million.