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Vaccinations are starting to rise in some states where COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing, White House officials said Thursday, a sign that the summer wave is attracting the attention of Americans hesitant about vaccines as hospitals in the South are invaded by patients.
Coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters that several states with the highest proportions of new infections have seen residents get vaccinated at higher rates than the nation as a whole. Officials cited Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada as examples.
“The fourth wave is real and the numbers are pretty scary right now,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said on a radio show in New Orleans. Edwards, a Democrat, added: “There is no doubt that we are going in the wrong direction, and we are going in a hurry. “
Louisiana reported 2,843 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, a day after reporting 5,388 – the third highest level since the start of the pandemic. Hospitalizations have risen sharply in the past month, from 242 on June 19 to 913 in the latest report. Fifteen new deaths were reported Thursday.
Only 36% of Louisiana’s population is fully vaccinated, according to data from the state’s health department. Nationally, 56.3% of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Aly Neel, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Health, said the state recently saw “a small bump” in vaccinations, adding that details would be available on Friday.
Warner Thomas, president and CEO of the Ochsner Health System serving Louisiana and Mississippi, said the system had seen a 10 to 15 percent increase in the number of people seeking the vaccine over the past two weeks. He has administered vaccines in churches, at the New Orleans airport, at basketball games and at the mall.
“We see every person we get vaccinated now as a victory,” said Dr Katherine Baumgarten, director of infection prevention and control for the 40-hospital system, noting that he was bringing in mobile nurses and projections show that its intensive care units could fill at the current infection rate.
Dr Catherine O’Neal, chief medical officer and infectious disease specialist at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, said on Thursday that the most shocking aspect of the outbreak was its speed. The workload roughly tripled in one week, she said.
On Sunday, the medical center stopped supporting transfers of coronavirus patients from hospitals in other parts of the state because they simply did not have the capacity, she said.
In Missouri, which is just behind Arkansas and Louisiana in the number of new cases per capita over the past 14 days, authorities have implemented a vaccine incentive program that includes prices of $ 10,000 for 900 lottery winners. The state is about 10 percentage points behind the national average for people who have received at least one injection.
Hospitals in the Springfield area are under pressure, reaching high and near-pandemic patient numbers.
“Younger, relatively healthy and unvaccinated. If that describes you, please consider vaccination, ”tweeted Erik Frederick, executive director of Mercy Hospital Springfield, noting that half of COVID-19 patients are between the ages of 21 and 59 and only 2% of this group are vaccinated.
The wave that started in the southwestern state, where some counties have adolescent vaccination rates, has started to spread to the Kansas City area, including the Research Medical Center.
“I don’t want to continue risking my life just because people don’t want to get vaccinated or listen to what healthcare professionals recommend,” lamented Pascaline Muhindura, a registered nurse who has worked on COVID- de l ‘hospital. 19 units for over a year.
“A lot of them don’t even believe in COVID-19 to begin with. It is incredibly frustrating. You are helping someone who doesn’t even believe the disease they are suffering from is real, ”Muhindura said.
Dr Jason Wilson, an emergency physician at Tampa General Hospital, has also watched the increase in cases with frustration. Unlike the start of the pandemic, when many patients were 70, he saw the median age of patients drop to their mid-40s.
“I spent a lot of time this fall and last summer saying, ‘We have to do these things, these social mitigation strategies until we get this vaccine. Just hang in there, ”Wilson said.
Hospitals were initially optimistic as cases were declining. But then he said, “Things fell flat.”
The Utah conservative reported Wednesday that nearly 300 people had been hospitalized with the virus – the highest number in five months. Intensive care units reached 81.5% of their capacity. Health officials have renewed their calls for residents to be vaccinated.
One of Arizona’s largest hospital systems has launched its own call for vaccination, citing an increase in the number of critically ill COVID-19 patients in just a few weeks. Dr Michael White, of Valleywise Health, said doctors mainly treat people with moderate symptoms, but that started to change two weeks ago. Now the patients are arriving seriously ill.
“This delta is currently focused on largely unvaccinated people,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases in the department of health policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.
The variant, which originated in India, now accounts for around 83% of genetically identified coronavirus samples in the United States. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at the White House.
She said the mutation was more aggressive and much more transmissible, calling it “one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of.”
“We are yet at another pivotal moment in this pandemic,” she warned. “We must unite as one nation. “
The CDC has not changed its guidelines that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks. But in Georgia, Atlanta Public Schools announced Thursday that they will implement a “universal mask wearing” policy in all school buildings in the system when fall classes begin.
Only 18% of eligible students in the Atlanta school system are fully immunized and 58% of its employees said they were either fully immunized or planning to be, officials said.
“Given our low vaccination rates and the growing community spread, the CDC recognizes that universal masking would be appropriate,” the school system said in the statement.
In Arkansas, a group of Democratic lawmakers urged the governor and Republicans who control the legislature to lift the state’s ban on schools and local governments requiring people to wear masks.
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Associated Press editor Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.
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