This archive report was first published on 14 July 2021.
Covid-19 Delta Variant Widens Gulf Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated ¶
Published on July 14, 2021
The Delta variant of the coronavirus has spread to 104 countries and all 50 American states, causing a surge in infections and hospitalizations in areas with low vaccination rates.
According to federal health officials, the Delta variant accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States. The spread of the variant has prompted a vigorous new vaccination push from the Biden administration, and federal officials are planning to send medical teams to communities facing outbreaks.
States with low vaccination rates, such as Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and Nevada, are seeing a rise in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Even in places like Britain, where wide swaths of the population are immunized, the Delta variant has outpaced vaccination efforts, pushing the goal of herd immunity further out of reach.
However, scientists say that even if the numbers continue to rise through the fall, Americans are unlikely to revisit the horrors of last winter, or to require booster shots in the foreseeable future.
‘I think the United States has vaccinated itself out of a national coordinated surge, even though we do expect cases pretty much everywhere,’ said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
‘Delta is creating a huge amount of noise, but I don’t think that it’s right to be ringing a huge alarm bell.’
Despite the spread of the Delta variant, vaccines are effective against the variant and already provide a bulwark against its spread. Reports of infections with the Delta variant among fully immunized people in Israel may have alarmed people, but virtually all of the available data indicate that the vaccines are powerfully protective against severe illness, hospitalization, and death from all existing variants of the coronavirus.
