Covid Italy, Galli: “Herd immunity? For now, only a shield from deaths and shelters”

Herd immunity milestone achievable in September? “It depends on what you mean. Herd immunity” against the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus “hasn’t reached anyone”, tells Adnkronos Health and Massimo Galli, director of the infectious diseases department of the Sacco hospital in Milan , lecturer at the State University of the Lombard capital. “Simply because, if it is understood that there will be no more infections because everyone is immunized, this is not the case. Today we are aspiring to protection against hospital, resuscitation and cemetery. This is the speech” he underlines, commenting on the perspectives opened by mass vaccination. that is moving forward in the country and the goals that health authorities and institutions are setting themselves. Achieving herd immunity, admits the infectious disease specialist, “would be crucial because it would allow us to get rid of the virus. But Sars-CoV-2 continues to put variants and, until we have a vaccine that allows us to fight them in a more decisive way, not it will be possible to reach the goal “. In short,” herd immunity is a more complicated speech “than it seems, warns Galli. “And you have to be careful” to take it for granted. “I’ll give you just one example: in October last year – he remembers – the city of Manaus in Brazil had 76% of the population who had become infected with Sars-CoV-2 and there was no herd immunity. Unfortunately it is instead, what we all know as the Brazilian variant emerged. To the good connoisseur, a few words “, concludes the expert.