Clin Ultrasound.
2020 Nov;5(2):35-41. 10.18525/cu.2020.5.2.35.
COVID-19: Balancing between Transmission Suppression and Immunity
- Affiliations
-
- 1Department of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea
- KMID: 2555121
- DOI: http://doi.org/10.18525/cu.2020.5.2.35
Abstract
- The prevailing strategy against COVID-19 is to suppress transmission until vaccine development is completed. However, the development of effective and safe vaccines, especially for RNA viruses, is difficult and often requires a long time. Additionally, in the case of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, which have a high proportion of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic patients with a high transmission rate, the effectiveness of suppressing transmission is limited. Therefore, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach, I suggest a two-track approach involving a suppression strategy for the high-risk group and an immunity-based strategy for the low-risk group. The key concepts of the immunity-based strategy are cross-immunity and herd immunity. Although the original concept of herd immunity was comprehensive and closely related to cross-immunity, it has shrunk to just a threshold of specific antibodies against specific pathogens since the advent of vaccines. We need to incorporate these two concepts into an effective public health strategy against the COVID-19 epidemic as well as future epidemics of other emerging infectious diseases.
