Highlights:
- The Covid-19 vaccination programme in US is stalling, while the extremely contagious Delta strain has spread to nearly every state, raising concerns about possible Covid-19 outbreaks.
- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the seven-day average of new cases was 13,859 on July 6, up 21% from two weeks earlier.
- The increase is due to the Delta variant accounting for about 52% of cases in the two weeks ending July 3.
According to data released on Wednesday, Covid cases are quickly increasing in the United States as the extremely contagious Delta variant dominates and immunizations remain stagnant.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the seven-day average of new cases was 13,859 on July 6, up 21% from two weeks earlier.
Because of a reporting lag following the July 4 holiday weekend, cases attributed to the most recent days may rise much more.
According to the CDC, in the two weeks ending July 3, the Delta variant, which is more transmissible than any previous strain, accounted for roughly 52 percent of cases.
Despite having one of the highest vaccine availability rates of any country, the United States’ immunisation campaign has been on the decline since April.
President Joe Biden came close to meeting his goal of having 70% of Americans vaccinated at least partly by Independence Day, with the current statistic of 67 percent.
Lower vaccination rates in the Midwest and South are contributing to higher case rates than high vaccination rates in the Northeast, according to a trend that has grown more noticeable in recent weeks.
Over the weekend, a hospital in Springfield, Missouri, ran out of ventilators to treat hospitalised Covid patients, as per local media.
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According to the Kansas City Star, the city’s two hospitals were treating 213 COVID-19 patients as of Monday, up from 168 on Friday and 31 on May 24.
“We’re going to see two different flavours of the pandemic in the United States,” Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told AFP. “One in which it’s more of an issue in places where there’s a high proportion of unvaccinated people.”
“The pandemic will primarily be controlled as an ordinary respiratory virus in other parts of the country,” he continued.
Adalja predicted a “decoupling” of hospitalizations and mortality from increased cases in highly vaccinated areas, as seen in Israel, even if Delta became the prevalent strain.
“I believe we must begin to move our focus away from cases and focus toward hospitalizations,” he said, “because that is what the vaccine was designed to do — it was designed to dissociate cases from hospitalisation.”
