Review Article

Herd Immunity in India: A Review

Sheema Fatima Khan
Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences, Teaching Hospital and Research Center, India
* Corresponding author
DOI icon 10.24018/ejmed.2021.3.1.671

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Submitted 2021-01-10
Published 2021-01-19

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Article Main Content

Herd Immunity is a brilliant solution to tackle and control global pandemics, if taken proper route for immunization such as through vaccination. It is defined as the number of immune individuals against a transmissible virus in a completely susceptible population. The term herd protection or herd effect is the protection to the whole population due to herd immunity. Herd immunity threshold is the minimum proportion of immune population required for herd effect or herd protection. To calculate the threshold, we use basic reproduction number (R0) to measure the rate of transmission of pathogen, in this case SARS-CoV-2. However, a better measure is effective reproduction number (Re). India is major example of herd immunity. Despite strict lockdown and other Covid measure, due to already crowded area the virus could spread fast and to vast majority of people if one of them were to catch it. This explains the steady decline in the number of coronavirus cases in India. At the end, until an approved effective vaccination available, public will still need to follow all the CDC guidelines in order to avoid the large deaths along with natural infection.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2, Herd immunity, Herd effect, Basic reproduction number, herd immunity threshold, pandemic, vaccinations

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