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The situation has improved dramatically since January, when Covid deaths overtook heart disease and cancer as the nation’s leading killer, according to a Bloomberg analysis. Yet, for the month of June, the coronavirus was responsible for 337 deaths per day. For comparison, the historical average of deaths from gunshots, car crashes and flu complications is 306 per day.
“The sad reality is that despite our progress, we are still losing people to this virus,” Jeff Zients, White House pandemic response coordinator, said at a press briefing last week. “Which is particularly tragic given that at this point it’s unnecessary and avoidable. Virtually all hospitalizations and deaths related to Covid-19 in the United States now occur in unvaccinated people. ”
Data for the analysis was collected from Johns Hopkins University, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The ascent of the delta
After 10 weeks of global decline in Covid deaths, the highly transmissible delta variant is driving a further rise. In the United States, health officials have warned that a similar reversal could be underway: Daily cases have doubled from a low last month and hospitalizations are on the rise again.
Vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. prevent up to 96% of hospitalizations and deaths from the delta variant, according to recent data from the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. The protections are even more important when one takes into account the effects of reduced transmission in well-vaccinated communities, as data scientist Cathy O’Neil explained in a Bloomberg Opinion column.
“Preliminary data from several states in recent months suggests that 99.5% of deaths from Covid-19 in the United States were in unvaccinated people,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky reported Thursday. “These deaths were preventable with a simple safe shot. ”
Late on vaccinations
The US vaccination campaign, however, has stalled. Once the envy of the world for its rapid deployment, the United States has since been overtaken by more than 20 countries which now have better vaccine coverage, according to Bloomberg’s Covid vaccine tracker. The EU and China, which currently administer injections at daily rates of around 4 million and 10 million doses respectively, are set to overtake the United States in the next two weeks.
Not only have American vaccinations slowed to a net – just 530,000 a day, on average – but the gap between the most and least vaccinated counties in the United States continues to widen. This has left some communities particularly vulnerable in the Delta. For unvaccinated people living in communities with low vaccination rates, the threat posed by Covid-19 is about as serious as it has ever been.
The vaccination gap in the United States is widening
Covid vaccinations in the United States have already prevented an estimated 279,000 deaths and 1.25 million hospitalizations, according to an analysis released last week by researchers at Yale University and the Commonwealth Fund. The report suggests that without vaccines, Covid would still lead cancer and heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States – even in summer, when respiratory viruses typically disappear in the background.
The sudden dominance of the delta variant surprised health officials around the world. In the Netherlands, cases have jumped more than 500% last week alone. The UK and Russia report the highest transmission rates since January. Israel has reinstated its mask mandate. Sydney and Melbourne are stranded again.
“The delta variant is tearing the world apart at a breakneck pace, leading to an increase in the number of cases and deaths,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing on Monday. “The pandemic is not over – nowhere. ”
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