Doctors hope that herd immunity will be a lifesaver with Corona Virus. Herd immunity happens when many people in the community become immune to an infectious disease. So that it stops spreading the disease.
This can happen in two ways:
1: Many people come in contract with the disease and in the time
people build Immunity for the disease.
2: Many people are also vaccinated against the disease to achieve
the immunity of the virus.
This works against some spread of disease’s. There are many reasons why it works.
This is how it works:
When a large portion of population becomes immune to a disease, spread of the disease slows down or stops. Many viral and bacterial infection’s spread from one person to another. This chain will be broken when most people don’t get transmit the infection from one another.
This also protect’s people who aren’t vaccinated or also who has low immune systems and may develop an infection more easily, Such as:
1: Older adults
2: Babies
3: Young children
4: Pregnant women
5: People with weakened immune systems
6: People with health conditions.
Natural immunity
This occurs when you become immune to a certain disease after contraction with the disease.This also triggers your immune system to make the antibodies against the germs causing the infection inside you.
If you contract with the disease again, the antibodies that dealt with the germ before can also attack it before it spreads and makes you ill. for example, In childhood if you have got chickenpox, most likely you won’t get it again. Even if somebody around you has it.
Natural immunity can also help create herd immunity. But this doesn’t work well as vaccinations. There are some reasons for this:
1: Everyone should get contracted with the disease
2: Contracting with the disease can be dangerous
3: You may not even know if you have contracted with the disease and you’re immune to it.
Does Herd immunity works?
This works for some diseases but not all of them.People in Norway successfully developed at least partial herd immunity to H1n1 virus through vaccinations and natural immunity.
Not every illness that has a vaccine can be stopped to be herd immunity. Herd community may not always work and protect,but it could
help prevent the widespread disease.
There are several reasons why Herd immunity isn’t the answer for SARS-CoV-2
1: No vaccine for Corona virus and vaccine is the safest way to practice herd immunity.
2: Doctors don’t know yet exactly why some people who contract Corona develop severely and others do not.
3: hospitals may be over burdened if people develop covid-19 same time.
Herd Immunity in the future:
Scientists are currently working on vaccine for corona. Even, if we have a medicine, we may be able to develop a medicine. If you’re vaccinated and build immunity against Corona, you likely wouldn’t get contracted the virus or transmit it.
The bottom line:
This is the community or group protection that happens only when a critical number of people of the population get infected with the disease.
The safest way to get the immunity is through vaccination.you can also have natural immunity by contracting the illness and building the immunity for the virus.