Allowing mass infections now is a terrible idea, even with so many vaccinated. The NHS will struggle to cope
There were almost 194,000 new cases of Covid-19 reported in England last week, which is 35% more than the week before. At the time of writing, 52% of the UK population had been fully vaccinated. Perhaps another 20% have some immunity from one dose of vaccine or previous Covid infection. If this level of population immunity was enough to contain the pandemic alongside public health measures, cases would be falling. They aren’t falling and it isn’t enough.
So cases will keep rising, currently doubling every fortnight or so, until either population immunity is high enough or public health measures are effective enough – or a combination of both – to halt Covid’s spread. The government yesterday announced a removal of all public health measures next Monday, meaning that population immunity has to do all the work. With millions of people still without the protection of full vaccination or previous infection, it is inevitable that a good chunk of that immunity will come from new infection rather than vaccination.
