Trump administration backs ‘herd immunity’ to end Covid lockdown

In a bid to reopen the economy, the US authorities despite recording highest number of Covid-19 infections are supporting the idea of adopting herd immunity strategy against coronavirus on the advice of some health experts.

Two senior advisers told Newsweek and other media outlets on Monday that the Trump administration supports the Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial document that argues against lockdowns and calls for a reopening of schools, businesses and other entities, while protecting people deemed vulnerable to the virus because of age or other risk factors.

"I think Americans should be cautiously optimistic about what's going on here," one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorised to speak on-the-record about the matter, but both defended the decision to move toward a broad-scale reopening, even though at least 5,900 people in the United States died with Covid-19 last week.

The coronavirus has contributed to the deaths of more than 214,000 people in the US since the pandemic began earlier this year.

Experts have argued that approaching "herd immunity" — essentially allowing more people to contract Covid-19 in the hopes that they would quickly recover and create a mass immunity — would likely result in many more deaths and illnesses.

World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during a virtual press briefing on Monday that such an approach would be "unethical."

"Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it," he said.

The Great Barrington Document, released last week, was authored by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University.

Thousands of additional scientists have signed onto the open petition, though media outlets have reported some fake names on the list.

"As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing Covid-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection," the open letter reads. "Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health."