When will the UK reach herd immunity? It could be early for Britain Fighting Covid

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Rising Covid-19 immunity in the UK raises the prospects of moving from the worst of the pandemic, with some scientists saying the country could cross a key threshold as early as Monday.

According to researchers at At University College London, that is when the so-called herd immunity in the UK could be achieved. Nearly three-quarters of the population will have antibodies to the virus, either through vaccination or past infection, they estimate.

Britain has already seen falls in new cases and deaths, and the government will relax restrictions, including outdoor dining, on Monday. These events have fueled hope that the nation will soon shake its Covid shackles.

Many other scientists think the UK is much further away from herd immunity than the UCL model suggests. Some say it overestimates the strength of vaccines and does not adequately explain declining immunity and new virus variants. According to estimates, no more than 40% of the country has protection against Covid Imperial College London.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about the duration of immunity, both vaccine immunity and natural immunity,” said Anne Cori, a professor at Imperial. “If immunity decreases, you may lose the herd’s immunity after you get there.”

Still, progress marks a milestone for the European country hardest hit by the pandemic, with more than 127,000 dead, and for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was criticized for a slow response to the crisis.

In the early days, his government’s top scientific adviser suffered a backlash after talking about the UK’s apparent ambition to “build a degree of immunity to the herd” (exposing a proportion of the population to the virus). but he has since insisted that this was never official policy and claims it was misinterpreted.

Virologists describe herd immunity as the point at which a virus struggles to break into a society due to high levels of immunity, either through vaccination or prior exposure to the pathogen. If it’s elusive for the UK, for most of the rest of the world it’s still a distant dream. Experts agree that speeding up vaccinations is the safest way to control the virus, and in that sense Britain is ahead of most other nations.

Nearly half of Britons have received at least one dose of vaccine, compared to just 14% in the European Union, according to Bloomberg Vaccine follower. However, after becoming the epicenter of a new Covid wave, there are tentative signs that Western Europe is turning the corner.

Thursday, France achieve the goal of giving 10 million people a first hit, a week ahead of schedule. Germany vaccinated 720,000 people that day, a record for the nation, and aims to completely inoculate its population by mid-summer. As supplies increase, Europe’s largest economy could administer 3.5 million doses a week, according to Health Minister Jens Spahn.

Europe finds some rare successes in its struggle to defeat Covid

Still, European nations are likely to lag behind Britain by completely vaccinating 75% of their populations, according to analysis by Airfinity Ltd., a London-based research firm. Although the UK will reach this level in early August, Germany will not reach it until September and France until October, according to current firm estimates.