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Herd immunity will not come https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/delta-variant-renders-herd-immunity-from-covid-mythical https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/delta-coronavirus-government-liberal-democrat-b950068.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/10/delta-variant-has-wrecked-hopes-herd-immunity-warn-scientists/ Prof Andrew Pollard, Oxford vaccine team Clear that the delta variant can infect people already vaccinated Making herd immunity impossible to reach even with high vaccine uptake Anyone who is still unvaccinated will, at some point, meet the virus. We don't have anything that will stop transmission, so I think we are in a situation where herd immunity is not a possibility and I suspect the virus will throw up a new variant that is even better at infecting vaccinated individuals Angela Merkel Ending free testing from Oct 11 Department of Health https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/covid-19-vaccination-programme UK vaccination, prevented 60,000 deaths and 66,900 hospitalisations Never be enough to stop Covid from spreading Winter wave inevitable Professor Paul Hunter, University of East Anglia The concept of herd immunity is unachievable because we know the infection will spread in unvaccinated populations and the latest data is suggesting that two doses is probably only 50 percent protective Time to change the way the data is collected and recorded as the virus becomes endemic We need to start moving away from just reporting infections, or just reporting positive cases admitted to hospital, to actually start reporting the number of people who are ill because of Covid Otherwise we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don't translate into disease burden Sajid Javid Preparations to offer Covid booster jabs from next month Waiting for the final advice from the JCVI Over-50s set to be offered the flu jab at the same time as booster Sir Andrew Pollard I think as we look at the adult population going forward, if we continue to chase community testing and are worried about those results, we're going to end up in a situation where we're constantly boosting to try and deal with something which is not manageable It needs to be moving to clinically driven testing If someone is unwell they should be tested, but for their contacts, if they're not unwell then it makes sense for them to be in school and being educated Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician, Imperial College Choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and actually there hasn't been as much with this delta variant They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices