Gail Alexan­der

Tues­day’s word from some in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts on the glob­al COVID-19 chal­lenge - in­clud­ing that herd im­mu­ni­ty isn’t a pos­si­bil­i­ty or achiev­able - is a sober­ing mes­sage.

That’s Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s view on re­ports by ex­perts head­ed by Britain’s Dr John Campell’s in an Au­gust 31 COVID 19 video log head­lined “Im­por­tant An­nounce­ment.”

Camp­bell, an emer­gency nurse and tu­tor/lec­tur­er, has a glob­al fol­low­ing with health care and sci­ence-re­lat­ed vlogs on prin­ci­ples con­cern­ing COVID is­sues. The vlog sug­gest­ed herd im­mu­ni­ty may not be a reach­able goal.

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh not­ed Camp­bell’s vlog and the in­for­ma­tion in it. Be­fore yes­ter­day’s Cab­i­net re­treat, Deyals­ingh was asked by the T&T Guardian his view on it. He replied briefly, “Yes, it is very sober­ing.”

T&T’s been striv­ing for herd im­mu­ni­ty by vac­ci­na­tions, in­clud­ing the lat­est dri­ve tar­get­ing stu­dents and oth­ers from 12 to 18.

In Au­gust, Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed its tar­get­ted herd im­mu­ni­ty lev­el was60 per cent on the pop­u­la­tion. Up to yes­ter­day, out of T&T’s 1.4 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion, 400,054 peo­ple were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and 510,548 had a first vac­ci­na­tion.

In his vlog, Camp­bell said a ma­jor par­a­digm shift has oc­curred in the way ex­perts – who are nor­mal­ly fol­lowed on the pan­dem­ic – were speak­ing of the virus now and there was rea­son­able ev­i­dence that every­one, whether in the UK, US, or wher­ev­er, will get the virus. This was due to the more high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Delta vari­ant and al­so as vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple can still trans­mit the virus.

Camp­bell said the idea that “we’re” not go­ing to reach herd im­mu­ni­ty was ba­si­cal­ly ac­cept­ed in the last few days. Herd im­mu­ni­ty was ini­tial­ly seen as 70-80 per cent of a pop­u­la­tion and then 90 due to the Delta pres­ence and many “break­through” cas­es – the lat­ter where even vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple get COVID and can spread it.

Camp­bell said all of those things had come to­geth­er and the think­ing had changed. He cit­ed the re­port of Sir An­drew Pol­lard of the Ox­ford vac­cine de­vel­op­ment team, who not­ed the Delta can in­fect those vac­ci­nat­ed, mak­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty im­pos­si­ble even with high vac­ci­na­tion in­takes.

He not­ed that Pol­lard felt there could be even more in­fec­tions and vari­ants – in­clud­ing po­ten­tial­ly more in­fec­tious ones – on the way.

Camp­bell al­so not­ed East An­glia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Paul Hunter’s view that the con­cept of herd im­mu­ni­ty is un­achiev­able. Hunter al­so be­lieved coun­tries chas­ing con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ty test­ing could end up in a sit­u­a­tion of con­stant­ly boost­ing vac­ci­na­tion shots. Hunter sug­gest­ed two vac­ci­na­tions were on­ly 50 per cent ef­fec­tive and lat­est da­ta sig­nalled it’s time to change the way da­ta is col­lect­ed as the virus be­comes en­dem­ic. This in­clud­ed stop­ping re­portage on pos­i­tive cas­es alone and fo­cus­ing test­ing on ill peo­ple and their con­tacts.

Camp­bell said ex­perts’ ma­jor con­sen­sus was agree­ment that every­one will be ex­posed to COVID and while an in­ter­est­ing change in the think­ing, for the un­vac­ci­nat­ed, it’s a sig­nif­i­cant warn­ing. He said any­one un­vac­ci­nat­ed will get the virus, as there’s noth­ing to stop trans­mis­sion cur­rent­ly.

Camp­bell, how­ev­er, not­ed that peo­ple with two vac­ci­na­tions have a much greater chance of pre­vent­ing se­vere ill­ness, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and even death. He said it was al­so be­lieved two vac­ci­na­tions, fol­lowed by a bout of COVID, could boost im­mu­ni­ty.

Dis­ap­point­ed on the herd im­mu­ni­ty is­sue, Camp­bell stressed the sit­u­a­tion made prepa­ra­tion with vac­ci­na­tion, health op­ti­mi­sa­tion and Vi­t­a­min D all the more im­por­tant. Coun­tries with win­ter have low­er strength sun­shine lev­els. Sun­light’s in­te­gral to the body’s Vi­t­a­min D pro­duc­tion.

Camp­bell not­ed that UK vac­ci­na­tions had pre­vent­ed 60,000 deaths and 67,000 hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions so far. But this hadn’t stopped the virus, which makes a win­ter wave of in­fec­tions in­evitable, as vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple can get COVID.

Yes­ter­day, lead­ing T&T phar­ma­cy own­ers said they’d al­so con­clud­ed the virus would be en­dem­ic and T&T has to ad­just on that.

Mean­while, as min­is­ters board­ed flights yes­ter­day morn­ing and re­port­ed for the Gov­ern­ment’s three-day re­treat in To­ba­go, there was no in­di­ca­tion whether the lat­est new in­for­ma­tion from in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts - on herd im­mu­ni­ty be­ing un­achiev­able - might be dis­cussed dur­ing the re­treat and if af­ter fur­ther re­view, what plans it might prompt.

The re­treat was ini­tial­ly de­signed to dis­cuss and craft di­rec­tions and de­ci­sions to move T&T ahead in the next fis­cal year, in­clud­ing via 2022 Bud­get plans. Re­treat out­comes are ex­pect­ed to be giv­en on Sat­ur­day.