In the USA, several of the experts have already given up: the vaccination rate begins to decrease in several regions, making it less likely to reach a target of 70% of the vaccinated population (the minimum threshold to be able to speak of collective immunity, according to some), even less a target of 80% (the more realistic threshold taking into account the more contagious variants).
Thus, for two weeks, we passed, for the United States as a whole, from an average of 3.2 million injections per day to 2.5 million. The decline would be more marked in Republican states like Mississippi and Wyoming. Cities everywhere have already announced that they will close mass vaccination clinics at the end of the month.
Dated May 3, 44% of adults Americans had received a first dose of the vaccine, and 31% a second dose. Right now, the lack of doses is no longer a problem: it would be possible to vaccinate all American adults by the beginning of the summer, if they wanted to.
At the same time, surveys have shown in recent months that the proportion of people who will refuse the vaccine will be higher in parts of Republican states, making transmission of the virus from one region to another inevitable, as health restrictions are lifted. And that’s without counting future international trips.
The question is obviously not limited to the United States. In Quebec, it will be difficult to reach the 80% target, conceded Sunday, on the show Everybody talks about it, the regional director of public health of Montreal, Mylène Drouin. The same variables as in the United States may have the same consequences.
This scenario sketched out by epidemiologists is not, however, entirely pessimistic: after all, even if “only” two-thirds of the inhabitants of a country were vaccinated, including the vast majority of the most vulnerable, the risk of death does increase. would find decreased. But the risk of hospitalizations would remain very real, and this virus has turned out to have much more serious medical consequences than expected. So the lack of collective immunity will still mean millions of people hospitalized, a high percentage of which will suffer from sequelae for months or even years.
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