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As the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus fuels epidemics in the United States, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Friday that “this is becoming an unvaccinated pandemic.”
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain well below last winter’s peak and vaccines are effective against Delta, but agency director Dr Rochelle P. Walensky urged people to get vaccinated completely, begging people to do it for their families and communities.
The number of new cases of the virus is likely to increase in the coming weeks, and those cases are likely to be concentrated in areas with low vaccination coverage, officials said during a White House briefing on the pandemic.
Dr Walensky added that “we are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk and fully vaccinated communities are generally doing well.”
Delta now accounts for more than half of new infections across the country, and the number of cases has increased in every state. There are an average of around 28,000 new cases a day, compared to just 11,000 less than a month ago.
So far, data suggests that many vaccines – including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson vaccines – provide good protection against Delta, especially against worse outcomes, including hospitalization and death. (Receiving a single dose of a two-shot regimen, however, offers little protection against the variant.) Almost 60 percent of American adults have been fully immunized.
“We have come a long way in our fight against this virus,” Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s Covid-19 response coordinator, said during the briefing. “Because we have fully immunized over 160 million Americans, we have fundamentally changed the course of this pandemic, from a pandemic that endangers the lives and livelihoods of all Americans, to a threat that looms. mainly unvaccinated people. “
Vaccination rates remain very uneven and Delta is already increasing the number of cases in areas with low vaccination coverage, including parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana. Even Los Angeles County is reinstating a mask mandate for everyone; from this weekend, masks will again be compulsory indoors.
The CDC, however, has repeatedly stated that people who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks in most situations. But on Friday, Dr Walensky noted that local authorities may want to implement tougher measures.
“These decisions have to be made at the local level,” she said. “If you have areas with low vaccination and high case rates then I would say that local decision makers might be wondering if masking at this point would be something that would be helpful for their community. “
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