COVID on the rise, mostly among the unvaccinated

Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are back in the United States as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads across the country.

The big picture: This happens almost exclusively in people who are not vaccinated, and it is worse in places where overall vaccination rates are low.

• “This is becoming an unvaccinated pandemic,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky said on Friday.

In numbers : The United States now averages about 26,000 new cases per day, a 70% increase from the previous week, Walensky said. Hospitalizations are up 36% and deaths are up 26%, to an average of 211 per day.

• About 66% of eligible Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and about 57% are fully immunized.

That’s enough vaccines to avert another wave as severe as the worst of the pandemic, when the United States averaged more than 3,000 deaths a day. But it’s still low enough that another wave of disease deaths, largely confined to the unvaccinated, is still a possibility.

• More than 97% of people currently hospitalized with serious COVID-19 infections were not vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Driving the news: Vaccinations in the United States leveled off as the Delta variant became the dominant strain of the virus here and around the world.

• A small handful of states with particularly low vaccination rates – Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada – are behind a plurality of new cases. One in five new infections are from Florida alone, Walensky said.
• “If you don’t choose the vaccine, you choose death,” a Louisiana doctor said at a press conference last week. The state has also launched a lottery with cash prizes to increase its vaccination rates.
• In eastern Kentucky, demand is so low that health workers are quick to break the seal on a new vaccine vial, even if most spoil, just to deliver a single dose.

The good news: The vaccines work, even against the Delta variant.

• The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines – as well as the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not licensed in the United States – are still very effective in preventing symptomatic infections and hospitalizations, according to a Financial Times review of real-world data from several countries. where the Delta variant is dominant.
• Some vaccinated people can still get sick, but the risk of serious illness is much lower. According to the CDC, about 3,700 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 infections across the country – not zero, but still significantly lower than the risk to unvaccinated people.

The bottom line: This is largely what experts anticipated in areas of the world with low vaccination rates. In the United States, however, unlike much of the rest of the world, vaccines are free and readily available. All of these cases and deaths are preventable.