Biz Health 25 Jan
"Although 15.5 million South Africans are already fully vaccinated, this only accounts for 25.2% of our total population.
Source: Supplied. Donald McMillan, managing director at Allmed Healthcare Professionals.Source: Supplied. Donald McMillan, managing director at Allmed Healthcare Professionals.
In 2020, herd immunity for South Africa was initially estimated at 67% but this was before the emergence of variants.
As the Covid-19 virus has increased in transmissibility, our target has moved closer to 90% and while herd immunity seems out of reach with these highly transmissible variants, it's still critical for as many people as possible to vaccinate. This is necessary to protect individuals from severe illness and death and reduce the strain on healthcare resources.
To achieve this, we must address vaccine hesitancy through educational and awareness initiatives that focus on busting the myths and misconceptions around its safety, while ramping up on availability and accessibility of the vaccine. We should also be shifting discussions away from herd immunity toward finding a way to live with the virus, and it is the vaccine that will make this possible, even if we do not reach the herd immunity threshold.
Accepting hard truths
Herd immunity is unlikely to materialise during our lifetime. Continuing to push this notion creates a false hope that we can get to a point where the virus is eliminated, which is unlikely as the virus will simply continue to circulate and evolve. Pushing people to think it is possible to achieve herd immunity as a means to drive vaccine uptake, has its own risks. It's likely to damage confidence in vaccines, because even if we do achieve our national target of 67% of the population there will still be outbreaks of Covid-19. This will lead people to start doubting the benefits of being vaccinated.
Failing to accept that herd immunity is unlikely will mean that authorities will insist that ongoing restrictions are the only way to stay safe. This is the most dangerous of all, as it compromises the lives of all South Africans in every single aspect, whether it be work, home, family, education, mental health or recreation; everything is affected.
Exacerbating the situation is an inequitable distribution of vaccine doses across the world, along with a slow uptake and staggered rollout, which simply allows the virus to keep evolving. Because it is not feasible for countries to shut their borders indefinitely, the entire global population needs to reach the same vaccination threshold around the same time. This means that we should be stepping up our vaccination roll-out programmes, instead of imposing greater lockdown restrictions."
Read more:
