Lancet COVID-19 Commission Statement on the occasion of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly

Ozge Karadag Caman, a public health researcher selected in 2018 for the IAP Young Physician Leaders (YPL) programme, is one of the authors of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission Statement on the occasion of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly.

One of the key messages of the statement is that

The COVID-19 epidemic can and should be suppressed through non-pharmaceutical interventions, including effective community health services, that cut transmission of the virus, to be followed by the introduction of effective and safe vaccines as rapidly as science permits. Countries should not rely on herd immunity by natural infection to suppress the epidemic. The disease and death that would accompany natural infection rates to reach herd immunity, typically estimated as 40–60% of the population infected, would be unacceptably high. Uncertainty also remains about the duration of acquired immunity from past infections.

You can read the whole letter here on the Lancet.

Ozge Karadag Caman is a member of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s Secretariat.