herd immunity
/ˈhɚd ɪˈmjunəti/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.53 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The indirect protection against the spread of a contagious disease in a given population caused by the immunity of a significant proportion of the population to that particular disease; the immunity may have been obtained through having survived the infection or through vaccination.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "During the years that the herd was being replenished by purchase abortions were frequent, but that practice was discontinued, and the heifer calves born in the herd have been raised. [...] Thus a herd immunity seems to have developed as a result both of keeping the aborting cows and raising the calves."
- "The Spread of Bacterial Infection. The Problem of Herd-Immunity [title]. [...] Consideration of the results obtained over the last five years, [...] has led us to believe that the question of immunity as an attribute of a herd should be studied as a separate problem, closely related to, but in many ways distinct from, the problem of the immunity of an individual host."
- "It is likely that many animals in affected herds have developed an inapparent or nonclinical form of the disease because there have been no records of recurrence of the disease on the same farm—an indication that a herd immunity developed."
- "The larger the number of immunised people in the community the less easy is the spread of disease from one person to another. [...] For the purpose of creating ‘herd immunity’, as this process is sometimes called, it is necessary to achieve 80 per cent immunisation of the community."
- "Jews, long exposed to some diseases in the confined quarters of European ghettos, had developed herd immunities through a long process of natural selection."
- "The disease incidence appeared to have a cyclic course. After an outbreak, the disease and virus disappeared and the herd immunity gradually waned in the next 2 to 3 years. A new outbreak was the consequence of the reintroduction of transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV)."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhɚd ɪˈmjunəti/
- British English: /ˈhəːd ɪˈmjuːnɪti/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Phrases
herd immunity threshold
post-herd-immunity