UK Coronavirus 'Herd Immunity' Approach Is Doomed To Fail, Says Chinese Coronavirus Expert

Covid-19 or coronavirus, as we know it, has infected nearly 200,000 people around the world and led to the death of at least 7,947 people.

In attempts to combat the fast-spreading virus, governments across the globe have been shutting down borders, closing schools, and banning public gatherings. But the UK and The Netherlands are planning a whole different approach to fight the virus- herd immunity, which, more or less, means to allow a section to be exposed to the virus to build by tolerance towards and hence stop the circulation of the virus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his team of scientific advisers have shared that the new plan of the government is to not shut down schools or ban gathering but to slow down the trajectory of the virus by practicing herd immunity. And as chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance put it, around 40 million people, i.e., around 60 percent of the population will have to be infected with the virus in order to build any immunity towards it.

Falling in the UK’s steps, the Netherlands also announced its plan to adopt the immunity idea, allowing its citizens to contract the virus at a controlled pace.

Both China’s top coronavirus expert and WHO has warned that “herd immunity” has high chances of backfiring

Chinese senior medical adviser, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, rebuked Britain's approach stressing that the disease is too infectious and lethal to be contained via such measures.

“Herd immunity won't solve the problem,” Dr Zhong Nanshan said at the 46th Coronavirus Prevention Media Conference. “We don't have the evidence to prove that if you are infected once, you would be immune for life. Our next step is to develop effective vaccines, which require global cooperation.”

The World Health Organisation has also criticized the UK’s approach of allowing millions to be infected by the deadly virus and hoping for mass immunity when having little knowledge about the virus.

“We don't know enough about the science of this virus, it hasn't been in our population for long enough for us to know what it does in immunological terms,” said Dr. Margaret Harris of WHO. “Every virus functions differently in your body and stimulates a different immunological profile. We can talk theories, but at the moment we are really facing a situation where we have got to look at action.”