The future of the COVID-19 pandemic and the hope of a vaccine
Abstract
In just ten months the COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 45 million cases and almost 1.2 million deaths worldwide, and the pandemic has already become the worst public health calamity of the last hundred years. Although the influenza pandemics of the past were controlled by herd immunity. Pretending that this would be a valid strategy for the control of the COVID-19 pandemic lacks ethical or scientific support, as it would carry a high hu-man cost in terms of disease and death. The only acceptable strategy is to rationally use a combination of all interventions aimed at interrupting the chain of transmission of the virus, including the constant and large-scale use of social isolation measures, non-pharmacological interventions. With the recent demonstration of the protective efficacy of several candidate vaccines, vaccination should become a major strategy to achieve the control of the infection by SARS-CoV-2. The future evolution of the pandemic will depend not only on the behavior of the virus, but also on the response from the society.
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References
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