(VI Consortium) On the U.S. mainland, some scholars are confident that the country will achieve Covid-19 herd immunity by April, a projection that would end the pandemic, by some estimates, rather early. Particularly, Johns Hopkins professor Martin Makary wrote in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed that the U.S. will achieve the feat, pointing to a steep 77 percent decline in cases in the past six weeks.
The professor said cases are down much earlier and more dramatic that experts had predicted because “natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing.” The professor wrote, “Testing has been capturing only from 10 percent to 25 percent of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55 percent of Americans have natural immunity.”
The USVI on March 1st will allow all residents who want to be vaccinated for Covid-19 to receive it. The move is part of the Bryan administration’s goal to vaccinate 50,000 Virgin Islanders by July. On Monday, Governor Albert Bryan said about 12,000 Virgin Islanders had received at least their first shot of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
