Delta Transmission Among U.S. Unvaccinated

Crowds on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in late July. The Delta coronavirus variant is driving record-breaking case counts in Louisiana and other states.  Kathleen Flynn/Reuters

"The bottom line is this: We have the scientific tools we need to turn the corner on this pandemic."

"Vaccination works and will protect us from the severe complications of COVID-19."

Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky 

"This moderate decline [diminishing effectiveness against hospitalizations among adults 75 and older] should be interpreted with caution and might be related to changes in the virus that causes COVID-19, weakening vaccine-induced immunity as more time passes since vaccination, or a combination of factors."

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report

"We've been patient."

"But our patience is wearing thin and your refusal [to be vaccinated] has cost all of us."

U.S. President Joe Biden

"The vaccines remain very protective against severe disease."

"I think we set our expectations too high for vaccines, thinking they were going to prevent people from getting infected and transmitting the virus."

William Moss, executive director, International Vaccine Access Center, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Medical staff treat a COVID-19 coronavirus patient at a hospital   AFP via Getty Images

 

The CDC estimates that the highly transmissible Delta variant is accountable for over 99 percent of new coronavirus infections. But this is a reality not only in the United States, but globally, where new waves of mass infections are bedevilling government agencies and medical communities who had speculated that with the mass inoculation of populations vulnerable to contracting the novel coronavirus, spread of the virus would decelerate and come to a halt, the viral spread coming under control.

Even countries like Australia and New Zealand which had formerly served as an aspirational success story in stopping the spread of the virus by stern lockdown measures that not all countries were prepared to emulate, are now in the throes of spreading waves of COVID-19, straining their abilities to cope. Neither country however, was in the forefront of mass vaccinations. The toll of the virus in the United States has been spectacularly awful.

Over 650 thousand Americans have died from having contracted COVID-19, racking up an average 1,500 daily deaths in the past several weeks. Over 99 percent of new coronavirus infections are now attributed to the Delta variant. Those Americans who shunned full vaccinations were seen to be over ten times likelier to be  hospitalized, eleven times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those fully vaccinated. This from a newly-released study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The largest study to date of the effectiveness of the three vaccines cleared for use in the U.S. involving 32,000 patients from hospitals, emergency departments and urgent care clinics across nine states assessed the Moderna coronavirus vaccine to be moderately more efficacious in preventing hospitalization than Pfizer-BioNTech's and Johnson & Johnson's. Collectively, the study indicated, all three were 86 percent effective but a significantly higher rate was seen among Moderna vaccine recipients (95 percent) than Pfizer's (80 percent) or Johnson & Johnson (60 percent).

 

Sweeping vaccine mandates were announced by the Biden administration mandate to curb the surging infection rate of the Delta variant. A rate of infection expected to increase and with it the pressure exerted on the tens of millions of Americans resisting vaccination. Most federal government employees are required by mandate to be vaccinated. Large employers are mandated as well to have their workers inoculated or to be tested weekly. A regulation that would impact close to two-thirds of all U.S. workers.

 

Concerns of waning immunity and the efficacy of protection through the vaccines against a more contagious variant are uppermost in mind within the U.S. medical community, reflected by the recently released CDC studies, reflecting broadly consistent data whose findings from other studies are that the vaccines continue to provide strong protection for most people against hospitalization and death, Delta surge included. With the exception of adults in the highest age brackets, those in particular with underlying medical conditions.

 

These concerns have led the CDC to advise the administration now preparing to roll out boosters, awaiting the word of the health authorities advising government. The first brand approved as a booster by the Food and Drug Administration is Pfizer, given its timely submission of data on the safety and effectiveness of boosting its two-shot regimen with a third shot, with other vaccines' approval expected to follow.  

 

Amir Hamja ... Bloomberg ... Getty

"After a steady decline in cases earlier this year, Delta caused a troubling rise in cases of COVID-19 and an increase in hospitalizations around the country. The variant has turned out to be more than twice as contagious as previous ones, and studies have shown that it is more likely than the original virus to put infected people in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People who are not vaccinated are most at risk, and the highest spread of cases and severe outcomes is happening in places with low vaccination rates."
"In the U.S., there is a disproportionate number of unvaccinated people in Southern and Appalachian states including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, and West Virginia, where vaccination rates are low. (In some of these states, the number of cases is on the rise even as some other states are lifting restrictions because their cases are going down)."

Yale Medicine