Opinion

Coronavirus response: lessons of swine flu pandemic show the need to focus on at-risk groups

Health authorities’ ability to contain the 2009 outbreak, despite comparatively low overall vaccination rates, suggests efforts to control Covid-19 should focus on vaccinating high-risk populations rather than seeking to achieve herd immunity

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Florence Mullins, 89, sits in a chair as a family member holds her place in a queue to receive a Covid-19 vaccine at Fair Park in Dallas on January 11. Photo: AP

Edward Pingyuan Lu is director of the Public Health Office at HSVG Mission, a non-profit initiative based on Guam, US, specialising in health, sustainability and cultural diversity in the Western Pacific region

Published: 3:30am, 20 Jan 2021Updated: 3:30am, 20 Jan 2021

Covid-19 vaccines are finally available. What we need next is an optimal vaccination strategy. If the Group of 20 can coordinate its member countries to vaccinate as many at-risk people as possible, it is likely to help the whole world bring the pandemic under control by summer.

According to the University of Oxford Vaccine Knowledge Project, when a high percentage of the population is vaccinated, it is difficult for infectious diseases to spread because there are not many people who can be infected. For example, if someone with measles is surrounded by people who are vaccinated against the disease, it cannot easily be passed on to anyone and will quickly disappear.

This is called herd immunity. Right after Covid-19 vaccines became available, some officials and experts started worrying about the percentage of people getting vaccinated. Their concerns were mainly related to herd immunity that most previous vaccination programmes tried to achieve.