How do adolescents and children factor into efforts to achieve herd immunity?
How do adolescents and children factor into efforts to achieve herd immunity?
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SciLine reaches out to our network of scientific experts and poses commonly asked questions about newsworthy topics. Reporters can use these responses in news stories, with attribution to the expert.
SciLine reaches out to our network of scientific experts and poses commonly asked questions about newsworthy topics. Reporters can use these responses in news stories, with attribution to the expert.
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Expert Comments:
C. Buddy Creech, MD, MPH
We do not yet know the exact number of immune individuals needed to stop this virus in its tracks. For some infections, such as measles, greater than 90% of the population must be immune to prevent measles from establishing a foothold. For other infections, as we get to 60%, 70%, or 80% we start to see substantial drops in disease activity. By vaccinating adolescents, in particular, we may be able to put enough pressure on the virus that we can drive down the rates even further.
Richard Malley, MD
Data from various studies suggest that adolescents likely contribute more to transmission than younger children. If this is true, then immunizing adolescents would be expected to have a greater impact on herd immunity than immunization of young children. At the same time, the success of vaccination programs in countries like Israel or the UK, where no one under 16 has been immunized, suggests that a dramatic impact of vaccination can be seen even without immunizing adolescents and younger children.
Robert A. Bednarczyk, PhD
Leaving a large chunk of the population unvaccinated – nearly 19% of the US population is younger than 15 years of age – provides for many individuals who can be infected with, and spread, the virus that causes COVID-19. It will be very difficult to reach herd immunity if this many children and adolescents remain susceptible. High vaccine coverage across the population will be our best way to minimize the impact of COVID-19 moving forward.
Paul Spearman, MD
With more than 70 million adolescents and children under the age of 18, there is a great opportunity to increase our overall population immunity to SARS-CoV-2. The term “herd immunity” has been kicked around a lot, and because it is imprecise many people favor using other terms now. We do know that the higher the level of immunity in the population, the less spread of virus there will be, and more importantly less disease and death. We don’t know if we will reach a level of immunity sufficient to stop all spread of the virus. This seems unlikely currently, especially with new variants and with the ongoing global pandemic. We may reach a time where a significant majority of Americans are immune but pockets of spreading infection continue among non-immune individuals and groups, with overall infection levels remaining low. We can hope for an even better situation with minimal spread in the US, but the virus has proven to be somewhat unpredictable.
