The United States has every chance of achieving collective immunity to coronavirus this year, says Nikolai Kryuchkov, an immunologist, Ph. D.
- Firstly, they have had a lot of illnesses. Secondly, the scale of vaccinations, purchases of drugs and the availability of capacities for their production indicate that the Americans are able to vaccinate a significant part of their population, - said the specialist in an interview with the correspondent of Vechernyaya Moskvy.
In the countries of the European Union, according to the expert, the immunization of the population is slower, but the chances of the formation of a protective layer in the near future are also high.
- The EU is paid good money, and I think that the vaccine will be delivered to them first of all, according to commercial programs. They have applied for 2 billion doses, but with a margin. They need a little more than a billion in the area, if we are talking about a single immunization. It is possible that it will be necessary to be immunized several times, because immunity from new vaccines is unlikely to be long-term yet, Kryuchkov suggested.
Large-scale vaccination against coronavirus in the EU and the United States began in December 2020. At the moment, two vaccines against COVID-19 have been approved in the European Union and the United States - mRNA-1273 from Modern and BNT162b2 from Pfizer, BioNTech. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has issued an authorization for the drugs for full use, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use.
According to the One world in data project, as of January 9, 2021, 6 million 700 thousand vaccinations were made in the United States against coronavirus. In the EU countries, the most doses of the vaccine have been introduced so far in Italy - 512 thousand, Germany is slightly behind it with 477 thousand doses.