SHILLONG, Aug 5: The state government hopes to achieve herd immunity of COVID-19 in the next one or two months since a large number of the people have been vaccinated.
When majority of a population is immune to an infectious disease, it provides indirect protection or population immunity (also called herd immunity or herd protection) to those who are not immune to the disease.
Commissioner and Secretary of Health department, Sampath Kumar said around 45% of the state’s population has been vaccinated. This is a significant change given the fact that the state was at the bottom of the list in terms of vaccination coverage in the past.
Kumar said even the highly-educated people had vaccine hesitancy initially but after learning of the benefits, many came forward to get jabbed. He said the department expects to achieve that level of vaccination which can create a kind of herd immunity, in the next one to two months.
There has been a continuous surge in COVID-19 cases in the state. Last week, the number of average daily cases was around 550.
Kumar said Meghalaya has a large number of villages and the spread of the virus has been mostly there. Presently, some 900 villages have one or two cases each, he said.
Stating that 100% of the cases in the state are of delta variant which is highly infectious, he said people are getting infected with the slightest exposure to the virus.
Kumar said the virus spread cannot be arrested unless everyone is vaccinated. According to data, he said every person in a group of 1,000 unvaccinated people may get infected and 40% of them will be symptomatic. But in a similar group of vaccinated people, only around 200 people will be infected and six of them may require hospitalisation.
What is worrying is that symptomatic cases and hospitalisation have increased in the second wave. The chances of hospitalisation are very high for the unvaccinated people.
Kumar attributed the high fatality rate to the delay in seeking treatment. According to a research of the Health department, almost 50% of the patients visit a hospital at an advanced stage of infection when their oxygen saturation level drops to 92. Kumar said the patients should rush to hospital when it comes down to around 94.
He asked people not to worry about testing. He said anyone found positive will be provided with proper treatment by the government. Meanwhile, despite people’s hesitancy to get tested, the government has managed to conduct around 3,000-4,000 tests every day.
