KTLA

COVID-19 vaccine key to reaching herd immunity

RN Lucia Gleason (R), in her antler headpiece, inoculates PACE worker Jeanne Cooke (L), in a Grinch mask, with the Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center (EBNHC) in Boston, Massachusetts on December 24, 2020. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

The aim of the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 is herd immunity — the point at which so few people are susceptible to infection that the virus runs out of places to go.

In the early days of the pandemic, epidemiologists estimated that would require inoculating about two-thirds of the U.S. population.


Now many of those same experts say that figure is almost certainly too low.

“If you really want true herd immunity, where you get a blanket of protection over the country … you want about 75 to 85% of the country to get vaccinated,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, told a reporter last week. “I would say even closer to 85%.”

Read the full story at LATimes.com.