If enough people are vaccinated against COVID-19, the hope is that it will be unlikely to spread — even to those who cannot be vaccinated.

That is what herd immunity is all about.

“Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to a disease to make its spread unlikely,” Warren General Hospital Chief Nursing Officer Joe Akif said. “As a result, the entire community is protected, even those who are not themselves immune.”

It usually takes a vaccination program — often an aggressive one — to get there, but those who recover from a virus also become part of the herd.

“Herd immunity is usually achieved through vaccination, but it can also occur through natural infection,” Akif said. “If enough people are immune, there is no one to be infected. So the spread is much less likely.”

Gov. Tom Wolf is looking for a 70 percent vaccination rate among adults state-wide in order to remove the requirement that masks be worn in public.

“Seventy percent would appear to be a typical percentage that has shown a strong correlation of community immunity due to the very low change of susceptible people to any virus or bacteria,” Akif said. “Historically, this percentage of immunity has been created for small pox and other immunizations that typically are received as children.”

Any level of vaccination helps, but the herd immunity standard is intended to protect those who cannot be vaccinated and are at-risk. “Herd immunity can start at earlier numbers, but with the mobility of people in today’s society, you are more susceptible to being infected when you move to areas of larger concentration of people or higher levels of people moving through an area,” Akif said. “It depends on your definition of community and the size of that community.”

“Warren County is currently – end of April 2021 – at 27 percent fully vaccinated for the age group over the age of 18. We have a long way to go,” he said. “With the increased availability of vaccines and what would appear to be a diminishing request for vaccinations, this really puts the 70 percent achievement in doubt for Warren County.”

As things now stand, COVID isn’t going away.

“We have recently seen our positivity rate for COVID increase,” Akif said. “While it is in the high 3 percent range, we used to have one of the lowest positivity rates in the state. Forest County is currently doing the best in our region. We are also seeing an uptick in admissions.”

The COVID vaccine is believed to be more like those for measles than the flu.

“Vaccines help bolster your own immune response to these viruses,” he said. “With COVID, the current vaccines have been extremely successful at adapting to the mutations and then diminishing the rates of serious and fatal effects of the COVID virus.”

“We may need boosters in the short term until we gain a better understanding of the virus,” he said.

“The flu is different due to the multiple strains of the virus,” Akif said. “The flu vaccine that is given each year is typically the strain that is most anticipated – there is A and B.”

“With smallpox, it was almost completely eradicated worldwide due to vaccinations,” he said. “Measles and mumps are also outbreaks that have been prevented by aggressive vaccinations and herd immunity.”

Those efforts have been somewhat undermined in recent years. “Unfortunately, there is a growing population that are not getting children vaccinated and we are starting to see a return of measles in pockets of the U.S. and Third World countries.”

Variants of COVID are popping up, but so far, the vaccines are working well.

“Variants could be a problem,” Akif said. “Each vaccine uses its own delivery system to attack specific characteristics of the virus to weaken it.”

“The current vaccinations have shown really positive results with the variants as they have started to develop,” he said. “This may be another reason for boosters, if variants begin to mutate to where the original vaccine may not be sufficient.”