Against covid no herd immunity without the obligation to vaccinate. Word of Arnaldo caruso, president of the Italian Society of Virology (Siv-Isv), who in an interview with Adnkronos Salute outlines a 3-step strategy to be implemented to defeat Sars-CoV-2 and its variants. “We are witnessing – he explains – a pandemic sustained by a virus that is transmitted by air with very high efficiency, even better than any other respiratory virus of the past”. Against such an enemy, “herd immunity cannot be achieved with the current vaccination campaign because to achieve it, theoretically, more than 95% of the population would have to be covered. What a non-compulsory vaccination today is not able to achieve. ensure”.
If therefore “it is useless to seek herd immunity when we cannot achieve it, then what should we do?”. First point – rather than chasing the immunization of children and very young people, for whom according to Caruso the benefit-risk ratio of the anti-Covid vaccination still needs to be clarified in more detail – it is now necessary to “focus on the over 50s – urges the expert , full professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology at the University of Brescia and director of the Laboratory of Microbiology of the Asst Spedali Civili – and on all people at risk (elderly, chronic, immunocompromised, health personnel), helping them in the decision to get vaccinated completely to protect themselves and others “. In other words, the ‘hesitant’ must be sought, found and vaccinated.
The second item in the ‘recipe’ of the number one of the Italian virologists, “a very important thing to which the State should devote itself carefully – warns Caruso – is then to evaluate the antibody titers of all these people at risk, in order to ensure them timely administration of a possible third dose in case of poor coverage “.
Finally, third point: “For vaccinated people who do not produce antibodies, because let us remember that there are also so-called ‘non-responders’ – recalls the specialist – it would be useful to foresee in a very careful and timely manner, starting today, the possibility of using the monoclonal antibodies not only in the initial therapy of the disease, so as not to make it progress, but also in prevention. Because passive prophylaxis with antibodies, for these fragile subjects who do not respond to vaccines, is the only hope of not getting infected “.