Union Health Ministry on Thursday said that India cannot rely on herd immunity as a strategic option against Covid-19. Addressing a press conference, a Health Ministry official said that herd immunity was not an option for a country as populous as India.
“Herd immunity is an indirect protection from a disease. This saves a population from a disease. But it develops when a vaccine is developed or when a population has already suffered and recovered from it. Herd immunity in India is not an option,” Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Health said, adding that India can hope to achieve herd immunity only after a vaccine has been developed.
Herd immunity is a term used to describe a stage where enough people become resistant to a disease to stop its spread. It can be achieved naturally or via a vaccine.
Rajesh Bhushan said that achieving herd immunity in India without a vaccine would come at a great cost. “Seeing that India’s population is around 138 crore, achieving herd immunity would require crores of people to get sick, which will cripple the health infrastructure, leading to numerous deaths,” the health ministry official said.
However, the ministry official did not dismiss the possibility of India one-day achieving the herd immunity against Covid-19. “Health Ministry thinks it’s possible in future but for now we’ve to follow Covid appropriate behaviour,” Rajesh Bhushan said.
The question of herd immunity is being raised after the serosurvey report indicated that around one-fourth of Delhi’s population and almost half of Mumbai’s slum population has suffered and recovered from Covid-19.
With over 52,000 fresh cases of novel coronavirus on Thursday, India’s Covid-19 tally has breached the 15 lakh-mark. As per the Health Ministry data, more than 10 lakh people have recovered from Covid-19 in India.
“The recovery rate has shown positive trends. It was 7.85 per cent in April and today it is 64.4 per cent,” Rajesh Bhushan told media at the presser.
The case fatality rate in India today is 2.21 per cent and it’s among the lowest in the world, he said.