A new report found that 80% of people living in the San Francisco Bay area would be willing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available to them.
According to the survey, conducted by the California Health Care Foundation, 71% of Californians in general would be ready for immunization. (The researchers gathered and interviewed a representative sample of the state from more than 1,500 adults.)
But will these numbers be enough to obtain collective immunity? Experts think so.
“This must be a good number to achieve or approach collective immunity,” said Dr. Amit Mahajan, a Yale Medicine doctor specializing in infectious diseases and radiology, to SFGATE.
After all, the percentage of Californians willing to receive the vaccine is within the range of estimates that Dr. Anthony Fauci – the country’s leading infectious disease specialist – suggested would result in “some form of normality” in the fall of 2021. He advised 70 to 85% in an interview with NPR earlier this month.
California fares better than the rest of the country in vaccine acceptance rates: a USA TODAY / Suffolk University survey in January found that only 56% of people surveyed nationwide would get the vaccine. A December survey by Pew found that 60% would be willing.
This number varies based on race, political affiliation, geographic region and other key factors. Californians, Republicans and the Sacramento region, according to the survey, are among the least likely. Their rates, however, are still better than the national standard.
Even so, the number of Californians likely to get the vaccine may be even greater. An estimate by Carnegie Mellon’s Delphi Group found that more than 91% of San Franciscans – and more than 85% in many counties in the Bay Area, including Contra Costa, Alameda and Santa Clara – would likely shoot.
That said, there are still many questions worth asking, as vaccines become more widely available and better distributed. (It is important to note: California is no longer among the 10 lowest states in terms of vaccine distribution, according to Bloomberg, distributing just over 52% of its available supply.)
Mahajan provided a great warning for the widespread distribution of the vaccine as the definitive solution for the virus.
“The vaccine has not been shown to stop transmission, so [this number being] good enough to obtain collective immunity is still an open question. “
What is complicated about herd immunity is that it depends on the virality of the disease. Measles, for example, is more contagious than a virus like meningitis, which requires close contact with an individual for exposure.
As a result, 95% of people, the pharmaceutical startup GoodRX estimates, need to get the measles vaccine before reaching collective immunity.
The new strains of viruses that are emerging in the bay area and in California on a large scale can pose additional challenges. And Mahajan says we still don’t know if so many Californians who get the vaccine will be enough.
“The impact of new variants cannot be determined with the current level of knowledge,” he said.