‘Event killing many people in slow motion’: Covid rages in under-vaccinated Missouri as Delta threat grows

The spread of Covid-19 is rampant in Missouri as the threat of the Delta variant increases in places with high vaccine reluctance.

Parts of southern Missouri have about 60 cases per 100,000 people per day. By comparison, New York City, a major epidemic area at the start of the pandemic, averages about 2.6 cases per day per 100,000 residents, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

The Delta variant is considered to be a more deadly strain of Covid-19 and around 50% more contagious. A previous infection appears to offer little protection against this version of the virus.

And only 39% of Missouri residents have been fully immunized. In Camden and Miller counties – home to popular tourist destination Lake of the Ozarks – even fewer have received the vaccines needed to be protected against the virus. In Camden County, only 32.3% were fully immunized, and in Miller County, that number fell to 21.1%.

The Missouri Department of Health has said three counties near Lake of the Ozarks are Covid-19 hotspots. The tourist destination hosted a rally early last summer that has become infamous for its blatant violations of Covid-19 safety guidelines.

Springfield Fire Chief David Pennington tweeted Thursday: “This is an event with many casualties, which takes place in slow motion. EMS resources are depleted and hospital systems are overwhelmed. Our community is in crisis.

About 58% of U.S. adults overall have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Compared to other countries, this is a high number, but it is still far from the 70-90% that some scientists believe is necessary to obtain herd immunity.

In the United States, the number of Covid-19 cases is stable, but these numbers hide two increasingly separated Americas, where cases continue to drop in urban and suburban areas, but increase in more rural and lesser areas. populations, such as Missouri, which leans more conservatively and where people are more reluctant to get vaccinated.

CDC Director Dr Rachel Walensky told a recent press briefing that “preliminary data from several states in recent months suggests that 99.5% of deaths from Covid-19 in the United States concerned unvaccinated people “.

According to the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 72 percent of adult city dwellers have received at least one dose, while the same is true for only 54 percent of adults who live in more rural areas.

A spokesperson for Lake Regional Health said The daily beast: “We are already stretched to our limits.”

“To be quite frank, we need you to get vaccinated now. If you haven’t already, please roll up your sleeve. Do it to protect yourself, your family and this community, ”added the spokesperson.

“Right now at Lake Regional we’ve seen over the last few weeks a very stable and growing number of hospital admissions that our patients are suffering from, you know, the Covid virus,” Dane Henry, CEO of Lake Regional Health Systems, says KY3.

“About two months ago we had between one and two, maybe three or four patients a day, and over the past six or seven weeks we’ve steadily increased to the point where on Sunday we hovered between 20 and 20 30 years, ”he added.

Dr Amesh Adalja, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Daily Beast that “all of this is completely preventable. I don’t think it can ever get as bad as it was last year, but things are going to get worse with the Delta variant before it gets better. We will see a higher increase in places with lower vaccination rates, such as Missouri. The higher the vaccination rate, the lower the numbers ”.

But many residents and visitors to the area don’t care, and some health officials believe it is possible that some Trump supporters will refuse to be vaccinated to prevent the Biden administration from meeting its vaccination goals.

“There’s a part of me, thinking about that – are there people who always come back to election results and say, ‘You know what, the current administration has set a target, we’re going to so do our part to make sure they don’t hit their mark? ‘ Said Craig McCoy, president of Mercy Springfield Communities. Bloomberg.