Such people would be "central" in their social networks, and thus likelier to spread disease-causing germs from one group to another. Assuming there is an outbreak, and not enough vaccines for every person in the world, immunising these well-connected individuals would remove social "bridges" by which germs can spread, experts wrote in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Using computer modelling, the research then calculated that vaccinating these "central" individuals would be "almost as efficient as the most optimal (existing) vaccination strategies". The goal of vaccination is to reduce the size of the population at risk of infection. It achieves something called "herd immunity", whereby unvaccinated people are increasingly unlikely to come into contact with an infectious individual.

Source: The Nation Bangkok January 03, 2018 00:11 UTC