This week, President Joe Biden said the United States will have enough vaccine for each adult by the end of May, and a CNN analysis of federal data shows that collective immunity is probably not far behind.
At the current rate of about 2 million injections per day – the latest seven-day average of doses administered reported by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the United States could achieve collective immunity in the summer only through vaccination . It will probably be even earlier, if we take into account individuals who may have some natural immunity due to a previous infection.
The herd’s immunity limits for Covid-19 are only estimates at this point. But experts generally agree that somewhere between 70% and 85% of the population must be protected to suppress the spread, a range that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently cited.
More than 8% of the population – almost 28 million people – is already fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the CDC.
If vaccination continues at the current rate and the two-dose vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna are the only options available, 70% of the population in the United States could be fully vaccinated in mid-September.
But the Food and Drug Administration recently authorized Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine for emergency use, and the company promised to deliver 100 million doses to the U.S. in the first half of the year.
At the current rate of about 2 million doses per day, including 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson single injection vaccine, 70% of the US population could be fully vaccinated around the end of July and 85% in mid-September. , according to a CNN analysis.
The CDC estimates that more than a quarter of the population may have been infected with Covid-19, bringing the portion of the population already protected to almost a third. Assuming that there is no overlap between people with natural immunity and those protected by vaccination, herd immunity could be achieved as early as June.
Experts note that some new variants threaten progress, potentially diminishing the protection offered by vaccines and circumventing some degree of natural immunity, and the hesitation of the vaccine may also create some limitations.