Armies of researchers around the world are working overtime to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. While it will take some time until one is available to stop the spread of the deadly and highly contagious virus, it seems as though Canadians are divided by the idea of how it could be administered.
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Jeffrey Joy, an assistant professor of evolutionary genetics at UBC, admits that making a vaccine mandatory is a complicated issue.
“On the one hand, you need to get the population up to the level of immunity to stop the spread of the virus,” he says. “On the other hand, there are people who can’t take a vaccine (due to underlining immune conditions) so they’d have to obviously be excluded.”
He adds that making a vaccine mandatory can potentially create backlash against vaccines in general. In order to avoid that, he believes there should be studies that examine the level of immunity needed to prevent the further spread of the virus. Then, conduct polls to gage the percentage of people who would get the vaccine once it becomes available.