COVID-19 herd immunity: where are we?

Authors: Fontanet, A and Cauchemez, S.

Publication: Nature Reviews Immunology; September 2020

Affiliations: Emerging disease epidemiology unit, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France and PACRI unit, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France; Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases Unit, Institut Pasteur, UMR2000, CNRS, Paris, France

Abstract: Herd immunity is a key concept for epidemic control. It states that only a proportion of a population needs to be immune (through overcoming natural infection or through vaccination) to an infectious agent for it to stop generating large outbreaks. A key question in the current COVID-19 pandemic is how and when herd immunity can be achieved and at what cost.