As 2020 came to a close and the vaccines began to be distributed, many people in the U.S. and abroad breathed a sigh of relief, believing that the pandemic would soon be over. However, the World Health Organization’s Chief Scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, announced in a press conference on Jan. 11 that herd immunity is unlikely to occur by the end of 2021.
“Because even as vaccines start protecting the most vulnerable, we are not going to achieve any level of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021 and even if it happens in a couple of pockets in a few countries, it’s not going to protect people across the world,” said Swaminathan.
Herd immunity is a term used by epidemiologists and virologists when discussing infectious diseases. According to the Center for Disease Control, herd immunity or “community immunity” is defined as “a situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely. Even individuals not vaccinated (such as newborns and those with chronic illnesses) are offered some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community.”
As of Jan. 21, 17,546,374 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. according to covid.cdc.gov. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently spoke at Biden’s first white house press briefing, stating that 75-80% of Americans need to be vaccinated before we return to a degree of normality.
“Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated,” Dr. Fauci said. “If we do that, if we do it efficiently enough over the second quarter of 2021, by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the third quarter, we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end of 2021, we can approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before.”
The number of vaccines required to vaccinate 75-80% of the U.S. population would be an estimated 500 million vaccines.
This would be an ambitious undertaking for the new Biden administration to accomplish in 2021.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke at a news conference in the White House last week and announced that the U.S. federal government does not have a reserve stockpile of COVID-19 vaccines.
“We now have enough confidence that our ongoing production will be quality and available to provide the second dose for people, so we’re not sitting on a reserve anymore. We’ve made that available to the states to order,” said former HHS Secretary Azar.
This has been criticized by multiple state governors who have complained that the federal government had lied to them about the number of doses that would be available. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have all criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic and vaccine production, calling it “botched.”
President Biden signed at least 10 executive orders on inauguration day, addressing the coronavirus pandemic, including a national mask mandate in all federal buildings and federal lands. His pandemic plan begins with an initiative to have 100 million vaccines available to vaccinate 50 million Americans by the end of his first 100 days in office.
Winthrop sophomore and political science major, Vincent Wasner, said that he is confident that the new administration will be able to manage the pandemic and is optimistic that normality is on the horizon.
“I think eventually we’ll be able to get it under control. I think probably by the summer, a lot of this will be done and over with. We’ll be getting back to normalcy,” said Wasner.
Americans are eager to get back to business as usual, but only time will tell when that will be.
