Conditional Herd Immunity

The basic reproduction number, R₀, for COVID-19 is estimated to be 2.5. With this level of R₀, herd immunity is reached when 60% of the population have been infected or recovered. During the COVID-19 epidemic, governments are encouraging/ordering the population to vary their behavior so that the effective value of R is considerably less than 2.5. This raises the prospect of a population reaching herd immunity with only 20% of the population being infected or recovered. This would be conditional herd immunity as it would be conditional on the population maintaining the lower value of R even after the number of infections starts to drop.

Based on a detailed analysis we present the countries listed in order of the expected time to reach conditional herd immunity.