Morocco’s Covid Vaccination Drive: Expert Warns Herd Immunity Remains Elusive

In an interview with Telquel, Jaâfar Heikel established the difference between acquired herd immunity and innate immunity. The former is acquired through vaccination. The latter is the one that protects the body against microbial attacks in general. To achieve immunity, about 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated. It is for this purpose that Morocco has started vaccinating children, who according to scientific data, are as much carriers and transmitters of the disease as adults and are essential for a country wishing to achieve immunity.

But according to the epidemiologist, "100% herd immunity is a utopia, but reaching an immunity level of 80% is important and crucial. First of all because there are variants, like Delta or Mu, which are more transmissible. They also present a risk of immune escape, that is to say that they escape the control that the vaccine can give by the production of protective antibodies," he specified.

But in this case, what about the return to normal life? "We must not link the return to normal social and economic life to the achievement of herd immunity. We must impose the vaccination strategy to increase the pool of protected population. We must also maintain the barrier gestures in places where there are concentrations of population and many human contacts, until the majority of the population is vaccinated. And finally, we must continue to test and treat," stressed the epidemiologist.

For him, the health authorities would do better to integrate into their strategies the means to fight Covid-19 in the long term, because viral respiratory infections will become chronic diseases. The population will have to adapt to living with the virus. The important thing would be to respect the preventive measures to limit the damage, he warned.