Population Immunity

What is Population Immunity?

The reduction in transmission of a disease that follows when a high proportion of a population is immune. With fewer susceptible hosts available, chains of transmission are interrupted more often, which indirectly protects some people who cannot be vaccinated or who do not develop full immunity; it does not make any unvaccinated individual immune.

This definition is part of the Disease and Immunity chapter in Cambridge O Level Biology.

Concepts related to Population Immunity

• vaccination coverage
• transmission chain