BEIJING (Reuters) – China and the United States must remove all barriers to travel between the two countries if the United States achieves herd immunity to COVID-19 with 90% of the population vaccinated, possibly by August, a Chinese epidemiologist said.
The United States is the country hardest hit, by number of cases, with nearly 30 million infections so far, although new cases have declined. As of Sunday, 15% of the U.S. population had received at least one dose of vaccine.
“By August, it could reach 90% to achieve herd immunity. If that is the case, if we can remove all political barriers, just based on science, then the two countries could possibly be the first two countries to free all barriers remove travel, ‘said Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at China’s Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, on Monday.
China has COVID-19 largely under control, with relatively small clusters of new local infections in recent months. No new community cases have been reported in mainland China since the end of January.
“China is the safest country in the world when it comes to COVID-19,” Wu told an online forum hosted by Tsinghua University and the Brookings Institution, an American think tank.
Wu said he hopes the vaccination rate in the United States could be more than 80% by June.
China, with a population of about 1.4 billion, administered 40.5 million doses as of February 9th.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Roxanne Liu. Edited by Gerry Doyle)