Are we a lot closer to achieving herd immunity with Covid-19 than has been made out? It is a question which has been asked many times, not least because the disease has a tendency to fizzle out in communities where around a fifth of people have been infected – as has been observed in London, New York, the Brazilian city of Manaus and the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The government’s switch away from a herd immunity strategy to one of full lockdown in March, on the other hand, was based partly on the assumption that we would need at least 60 per cent of people to be infected before herd immunity was achieved.
Now, a paper in the BMJ suggests that we may have seriously been under-estimating the number of people who have been exposed to the virus SARS-CoV-2 and who as a result may have gained some degree of immunity to the infection.
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