Sir Andrew Pollard, a professor of pediatric infection and immunity in the U.K. has stated that the idea of reaching herd immunity with the Delta variant is unrealistic.
One of the issues he pointed out was that the new variant can still infect those who are vaccinated, whereas a vaccine for measles doesn’t work like that.
Currently, 60% of the population in the U.K. is fully vaccinated but the new variant is more transmissible, so the vaccine rate needs to be higher if Britain hopes to get any sort of control of the spread.
Pollard expressed concern that what may come next is an even more transmissible variant than the Delta variant.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California San Francisco, says that the amount vof virus the Delta variant produces is so great that someone who may have dodged the virus last year might not be so lucky this time around.
The more the virus spreads, the greater chance it has at further mutating.
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