Herd immunity not a possibility with Delta variant, warns U.K. vaccine expert

Professor Andrew Pollard also said there was no cause for “panic” as he expressed his doubts over the U.K. government’s proposed third booster dose of vaccines.

The highly transmissible Delta variant of has rendered the prospect of herd immunity, where the majority of a country’s population becomes immune to a virus, difficult, the head of the U.K.’s Oxford Vaccine Group has warned. Professor Andrew Pollard, who led the team behind the Oxford University’s vaccine, told the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Coronavirus on Tuesday that the fear of another even more transmissible variant remains a possibility and therefore there is nothing that can completely stop the deadly virus from spreading. However, he also said there was no cause for “panic” as he expressed his doubts over the U.K. government’s proposed third booster dose of vaccines. “The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population,” Prof. Pollard explained during the online evidence session.