Herd immunity can’t be a choice in India: Centre

NEW DELHI: The herd immunity level is “far away” for the Indian population and it can only be achieved through immunisation by vaccines, a top health ministry official said on Thursday and added that reaching this threshold – believed to be crucial for the Covid-19 outbreak to end – in any other manner will exact too high a cost. The official also hinted that India is looking at a multilateral, WHO-led mechanism to secure Covid vaccines and the country is yet to begin direct discussions with any of the developers that are leading the development race.

“For a large country like India, herd immunity cannot be a strategic choice or a strategic option... It will come at too high a cost and can be done only through immunisations via vaccination,” said Rajesh Bhushan, the officer on special duty, health ministry.

The march of an infectious disease such as Covid-19 can be halted only when there is a large enough proportion of the population that is immune to it – a threshold known as herd immunity. Besides a vaccine, the only way people become immune is if they had the disease and recovered. “Government has not signed agreement with any vaccine manufacturing company. There are multiple stakeholders within and outside government and ministry of health has started actively engaging with such stakeholders. It’s too premature to comment on supply and distribution at this stage but whenever it comes it has to be deployed on a much larger scale than the existing vaccines,” said Bhushan.

PRATIK CHORGE/HT PHOTO A health worker takes a swab sample of a resident in Govandi on Thursday.