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© Patrick T. Fallon / AFP / Getty Images
A health worker prepares a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at a Kedren Health mobile vaccination clinic at the Watts Juneteenth Street Fair on June 19, 2021 in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. – On June 17, the United States designated Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the country, a federal holiday with President Joe Biden urging Americans “to learn from our history.” (Photo by Patrick T. FALLON / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images)
In the United States, children will likely pay the price for not getting vaccinated at rates high enough to slow or stop the spread of Covid-19, which has increased in most states, an expert said in vaccines.
If vaccination rates among adults and children 12 and older continue to lag amid the increased spread of the Delta variant, the youngest members of the population will be the most affected, said Dr Peter Hotez , vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine in Baylor. College of Medicine.
“Transmission will continue to accelerate (…) and those who will also pay the price, in addition to unvaccinated adolescents, are the small children who depend on adults and adolescents for immunization in order to slow down or slow down. stop transmission, ”he said. mentionned.
In 46 states, rates of new cases last week are at least 10% higher than rates of new cases the week before, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
In Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country, the number of cases has increased by 500% in the past month, according to the latest health data from the county.
“Every patient we have admitted for Covid is not yet fully vaccinated,” county health services director Dr Christina Ghaly told the supervisory board on Tuesday.
The health department operates four hospitals, including those affiliated with the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, as well as 19 health care centers across the region.
As cases increase nationwide, only 48.2% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And although many can rule out the risk of low vaccination rates in children, citing their low Covid-19 death rates, Hotez said they are still at risk of serious complications.
In Mississippi, seven children are in intensive care with Covid-19, and two are on ventilators, Public health officer Dr Thomas Dobbs tweeted Tuesday evening. Many more teens could be hospitalized, Hotez said, adding that up to 30% of infected children will develop long-term Covid-19.
Nationally, the overall number of new daily hospitalizations for Covid-19 is likely to increase over the next four weeks, according to an ensemble forecast released on Wednesday by CDC Projects. There will likely be 2,100 to 11,000 new hospital admissions confirmed for Covid-19 on August 9, according to forecasts. Hospitalizations had been declining steadily since the end of April, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Scientists are also now learning the long-term neurological consequences of Covid-19, Hotez said. Some studies have shown impacts on the brains of people infected with the virus. A study in April found that 34% of Covid-19 survivors were diagnosed with neurological or psychological illness within six months of their infection.
“What you are doing is damaging a whole generation of teenagers to neurological damage in a totally unnecessary way,” Hotez said. “It’s just absolutely heartbreaking and beyond frustrating for vaccine scientists like me to watch this happen.”
Debate on vaccine mandates
With experts stressing the importance of vaccinating a majority of Americans against the virus, some officials question whether to impose vaccinations locally. Some schools and employers have already put in place measures requiring that students and employees be vaccinated before their return.
Last month, Morgan Stanley announced that unvaccinated employees, guests and customers would be banned from its New York headquarters. In April, Houston Methodist, a network of eight hospitals, said it would require all of its employees to be vaccinated. Of the 26,000 employees, 153 quit or were fired for refusing the vaccine.
That same month, the American College Health Association released a policy statement recommending Covid-19 vaccination requirements for all college and university students on campus for the next fall semester, where the law and resources state allow it.
But many states are preparing to block such demands.
At least seven states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma and Utah – this year enacted legislation that would prevent public schools from requiring coronavirus vaccinations or documentation of vaccination status, according to a CNN analysis.
Such legislation can hurt the nation’s 48 million Americans under the age of 12, former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Tuesday. Currently, Covid-19 vaccines are only available in the United States to people 12 years of age and older. Vaccine trials are underway for children 6 months to 11 years old.
“If we start with a goal on children and we want children to go back to school, which we all say is the priority, then we need to take employers, schools and universities more seriously. come together and say, “It’s great if you don’t want to be vaccinated. But if you don’t, you really can’t get access to places that will put you in contact with people who can’t get vaccinated, ”Sebelius said.
The CDC announced last week that it is prioritizing in-person learning, even though not all Covid-19 security measures are in place. As K-12 schools will have a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, there is a need to overlay strategies such as masking, physical distancing and, most importantly, vaccinations for everyone who qualifies – people 12 and older. , the agency said.
The federal government can support vaccine use by speeding up full approval of available vaccines, Sebelius said. The vaccines are now available in the United States under emergency use authorization.
“Getting full approval – getting out of emergency use authorization and getting full approval – is something that will clear up any legal questions private employers might have,” she said.
Study suggests why Delta variant is more contagious
The Delta variant could spread faster than other strains of the novel coronavirus because it makes more copies of itself inside people’s bodies faster than other strains of the coronavirus.
In research published online last week, Chinese scientists first detected positive Delta viral loads that were about 1,260 times higher than previous strains. They compared 62 Delta cases with 63 cases from the start of the epidemic wave in 2020.
In addition, the time it took for people in quarantine to test positive for the coronavirus by PCR was also shortened – from around six days with previous infections to four days with Delta.
“These data show that the Delta variant may be more infectious at the onset of infection,” the researchers wrote.
According to Public Health England, a number of analyzes have shown Delta to be more transmissible, including laboratory studies which suggest “increased replication in biological systems that model the human airways and evidence of optimized cleavage of furin ‘- a process that activates the virus’ entry into the human cell. The variant has also been observed to spread faster in actual epidemiological studies.
According to the World Health Organization, Delta is estimated to spread around 55% faster than the Alpha variant first identified in the UK, and around twice as fast as variants that do not reach the level of “interest” or “concern”.
Health officials said cases caused by the Delta variant in fully vaccinated people are rare, and the strain mostly only causes serious illness and death in unvaccinated people.
And health officials are not only concerned about the risks of Covid-19 for unvaccinated people, but also the risks for a significant number of partially vaccinated people – especially those who are late for their second dose or who skipped their second. dose appointment.
The Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines are given in two doses, 21 and 28 days apart, respectively. Studies have shown that these vaccines are much more effective against the Delta variant after the two-dose series has ended. People who have received a dose should always follow Covid-19 mitigation steps, such as wearing masks, until they are fully immunized.
© CNN
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