WHO warns that the concept of spreading Covid-19 in order to achieve herd immunity is an unethical health practice.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that some countries are letting covid to run amongst communities for letting people to develop immunity.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been frequent talks regarding herd immunity, and there were also suggestions that lockdown could be avoided and thus allow the virus to spread amongst people and also safeguarding only vulnerable people.
These talks and discussions happened because of the expectation of the chances of accruing a natural immunity to defend the virus.
Meanwhile, Tedros pointed out that this procedure has never been used as an approach for responding to an outbreak.
During a virtual press briefing he said that herd immunity is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.
“Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it,” Tedros said.
During the primary stages of Covid-19, the UK government was also pushing for a same kind of strategy, but later the nation was forced to shut down because of the hike in Covid positive cases along with covid related deaths and hospitalization.
Even, Philip Nolan, the National Public Health Emergency Team’s epidemiological modelling advisory group chair Professor just said there was no guarantee herd immunity would work and is ethically questionable.
“Allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical. It’s not an option.”
Tedros said that there were some cases where people are believed to have been infected with the virus a second time and he also mentioned that the infections could lead one to certain other health problems too.