Israel is leading the world in its vaccination rate, and now one of the country's leading doctors believes it may be close to reaching herd immunity, APA reports citing BBC.
Herd immunity happens when enough of a population has protection against an infection that it stops being able to spread - and even people who don't themselves have immunity are indirectly protected.
For Covid, the estimated threshold for herd immunity is at least 65%-70%.
Prof Eyal Leshem, a director at Israel's largest hospital, the Sheba Medical Center, says herd immunity is the "only explanation" for the fact that cases continue to fall even as more restrictions are lifted.
"There is a continuous decline despite returning to near normalcy," he says.
But scientists in the UK are more cautious. Dr Sarah Pitt from the University of Brighton urges "extreme caution" in concluding that herd immunity had been reached - something she believes will be difficult even at high vaccination rates.
She says it is still too early to tell: "We need to see whether the cases in Israel continue to fall and stay at low levels."
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