A case for Covid-19 vaccine bonds in Africa
By Oluwaseun Oguntuase on 10 February 2021
Mass vaccination remains one of the most successful, cost-effective public health interventions. Being vaccinated means individuals are not only protected from being infected themselves, they also cannot pass the infection onto other people, where it may cause severe disease.
However, stopping the continued spread of pathogens in a population requires herd immunity, also known as population immunity. Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune, either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.
Experts have warned that around 80-90% of specific populations must have Covid-19 immunity, either through prior infection or vaccination, to reach herd immunity, but seroprevalence studies suggest that less than 10 percent of people in most countries have been infected with Covid-19. The World Health Organisat