Herd immunity difficult in India: AIIMS Director

NEW DELHI: Herd immunity is “very difficult” to achieve and one should not think of it in “practical terms” in India, especially in the times of “variant strains” of COVID-19 and “waning immunity”, claimed AIIMS director Randeep Guleria on Sunday.

Guleria was speaking at the ongoing edition of Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) in a session on his book “Till We Win: India’s Fight Against The Covid-19 Pandemic” -co-authored by public policy and health systems expert Chandrakant Lahariya and renowned vaccine researcher and virologist Gagandeep Kang.

“Herd immunity is something that is going to be very, very difficult to achieve and it is something one should not really think of in practical terms... because the variant strains and varying immunity with times can lead to a chance where people may have reinfection or get infection again,” the AIIMS director said. “And one should also remember that large number of people have had mild infections and we do know that those with mild infection tend to have less antibodies production, their antibodies tend to wane over a period of time,” he added. Experts say herd immunity is said to have been developed in a population segment if at least 50-60 per cent of those are found to have the presence of antibodies in a sero-prevalence survey.

Week-long lockdown in Maha’s

Amravati from today: ‘ Due to the spike in coronavirus cases in the past few days, Amravati district in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region will be placed under a week-long lockdown from 8 pm on February 22. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said religious, social and political gatherings will be prohibited in the State from Monday.