Developing herd immunity unethical: WHO chief

October 14, 2020 19:06

The idea of fighting a rapidly spreading pandemic like Covid-19 by developing herd immunity among populations is "unethical" and cannot be justified scientifically, World Health Organisation Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said.

The WHO chief argued that herd immunity can't be a justifiable strategy to respond to an outbreak, let alone the Covid-19 pandemic.

Elaborating on this, he said there has been some discussion on the concept of reaching "so-called herd immunity" by letting the virus spread among people.

He said instead of thinking of herd immunity, "We must prevent amplifying events, protect the vulnerable, empower and educate communities and find, isolate, test and treat (patients)."

Herd immunity, Dr Tedros said, is a concept that is used for vaccination in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.

Strongly opposing the proposal for herd immunity, the WHO chief said this strategy has never been used to respond to an outbreak.

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