‘Australia should vaccinate the 12-40 years group for herd immunity’

The findings, published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA), were made from a new model developed by James Cook University (JCU), reports Xinhua news agency

A new Covid-19 pandemic tracking model revealed on Monday that Australia’s current vaccination strategy should now prioritise administering the Pfizer jab to people aged between 12 and 40 years old to achieve herd immunity.

New model

The findings, published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA), were made from a new model developed by James Cook University (JCU), reports Xinhua news agency. 

The model incorporated age-specific mixing, infectiousness, susceptibility, and severity to assess the impact of the epidemic under different public health intervention scenarios, and it also examined different vaccination programmes, such as AstraZeneca only, Pfizer only, and the mixed programme of vaccinating.

Epidemiologist Professor Emma McBryde from JCU’s Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine said the modelling showed Australia’s current strategy of vaccinating the vulnerable older age groups first is the optimal strategy for reducing hospitalisations, deaths, and years of life lost, but it may be “unlikely to achieve herd immunity” due to the uncertain effective reproduction number of the Delta strain.

“The current plan to vaccinate 80 per cent of the adult population, or about 65 per cent of the total population, falls far short of herd immunity,” said McBryde.

Lockdown to be lifted in most of NZ

Most of New Zealand will move out of lockdown on Tuesday except for the largest city of Auckland, which will remain in the strictest type of lockdown until at least next week, the government announced on Monday. The nation has been battling an outbreak of the Delta variant of the Coronavirus since last month. All recent cases have been found in Auckland, including 20 that were found on Monday. 

1,90,832
No. of new cases reported globally in the past 24 hours

22,09,33,684
Total no. of cases worldwide

45,71,383
Total no. of deaths worldwide

Source: WHO/Johns Hopkins

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!