Why eliminating Covid-19 is critical: Since more waves of infection, hospitalisations and deaths are inevitable for other countries until a vaccine arrives

Sunday, April 19th, 2020 | Nick Wilson | 17 Comments

Prof Rod Jackson (Epidemiologist, Auckland University)

There are really only three ways that a population can beat Covid-19: (i) eliminate the virus and keep infected people out (the approach NZ is taking); (ii) allow a sufficient proportion of the population to get infected and become immune to re-infection so there are no longer enough non-immune people to allow the virus to spread (this is called herd immunity and is estimated to be at least half of any population for Covid-19); or (iii) develop an effective vaccine, which is the ideal way of achieving herd immunity. Given a vaccine might still be a long way off, NZ’s elimination strategy (if successful) is likely to avoid high numbers of deaths and the need for long periods of restrictions to suppress or mitigate the spread of Covid-19.

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