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A new study has revealed that inoculating all adults cannot solely help in achieving herd immunity and fully prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, stated that the gradual release of control measures, high vaccine uptake, and a vaccine with high protection against infection are essential to minimise future waves of infection.
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Preliminary findings suggested that the vaccine does offer a level of protection against infection. However, the exact level is still unclear.
Professor Matt Keeling, from the University of Warwick, UK, says “Our modelling suggests that vaccination rollout in adults alone is unlikely to completely stop Covid-19 cases spreading in the UK. We also found that early sudden release of restrictions is likely to lead to a large wave of infection, whereas gradually easing measures over a period of many months could reduce the peak of future waves.”
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He added: “The huge success of the UK’s vaccine programme so far, coupled with the government’s gradual roadmap for easing restrictions, is a cause for optimism. However, some measures, such as test, trace, and isolate, good hand hygiene, mask-wearing in high-risk settings, and tracing from super-spreader events, may also be necessary for some time.”
Caution against abrupt relaxation
The findings indicated that although vaccination can substantially reduce the virus spread, it may not be enough to drive the spread below 1 without other control measures. Under the most optimistic scenario for protection against infection, the spread is estimated to be 1.58 without other controls.
The scale of future waves and the number of deaths is influenced by how early and over what time-scales measures are relaxed, the vaccine’s level of protection against infection, and vaccine uptake, the authors of the study noted.
Even small relaxations of measures, if done abruptly, were predicted to lead to large waves of infection.
The authors considered abrupt releases of some Covid-19 measures with a vaccine that offers 85 per cent protection against infection and calculate the number of deaths during January 2021-January 2024. A partial release in February 2021 was estimated to lead to 1,30,100 deaths by January 2024.
Although vaccination substantially decreases overall deaths, the authors noted that some people who have been vaccinated will still die of Covid-19.
The authors further cautioned that vaccine uptake is likely to be uneven due to disparity in the economic condition of people. This potentially gives rise to pockets of infection, as control measures are relaxed.
They stressed the importance of intensive test, trace, and isolate capabilities to target these pockets of infection.
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