Prognosis
Pfizer Herd Immunity Study Stymied by Iceland’s Wins Over Covid
- Proposal eyed 500,000 shots to quickly go to 70% of population
- Pfizer pulled back after seeing too few cases, deCode CEO says
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A push by Iceland to get Pfizer Inc.’s backing for a nationwide study on the ability of vaccines to quickly create herd immunity has run into an unexpected snag. The tiny island nation has done too good a job keeping Covid-19 in check.
Before Christmas, Kari Stefansson, the head of Iceland-based deCode Genetics, and Thorolfur Gudnason, the country’s chief epidemiologist, reached out to Pfizer executives. Their pitch: If Iceland could quickly get 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech SE vaccine, the country could inoculate about 70% of its population by the end of March, creating the basis of a real-life study on whether herd immunity can be achieved as a result.