Coronavirus in Italy, to keep the virus under control “we must reach and maintain vaccination coverage above the threshold that we define herd immunity” and that is “probably 90%” of administering anti-covid vaccines to the population. Like this Giovanni Rezza, Director General of Prevention of the Ministry of Health, in his speech at the national conference ‘The pandemic seen through the eyes of…’, in Venice at the Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista.
“The question we ask ourselves is: what happens now in winter? Today – explained Rezza – we have a very good situation, even if unfortunately there are still cases and 20-30 deaths a day, but we are among the countries in the world with the lowest incidence “of Covid-19. “Result of the fact that we keep the measures, the mask indoors for example. What will happen depends on many factors, but we must achieve and maintain vaccination coverage above the threshold we call herd or community immunity, because that is what allows us to substantially keep transmission under control. And this threshold is reached if we reach a coverage which, although varying a lot with the Rt of the virus, if the “index” is 5-6 “, it is a coverage of” 90% probably“, the words of the expert.
“We must be prepared for an upcoming ‘disease X’, in 10 or 50 years. The “Covid” emergency taught us that we were expecting a flu epidemic and a ‘virus X’ disease has arrived. Someone – underlined Rezza – could say that coronaviruses were so widespread that one could imagine the leap in species, but no one would have bet on it. We have other viruses, also the result of climate change, which could take on pandemic dimensions. But what we fear most are respiratory viruses “, which” are the most difficult to control “.
It is necessary “to always have personal protective equipment and to activate all that is possible in terms of medical countermeasures. We must plan already now, to avoid being faced with a new pandemic emergency”, Rezza warned.