Covid-19 Hospitalizations Ticking Up in US, Delta Variant Lethal

“We should think about the Delta variant as the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,” Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser to Joe Biden’s Covid Response Team, told CNN on Wednesday.

“It’s twice as infectious. Fortunately, unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the Delta variant in its tracks: It’s called vaccine.”

For fully vaccinated people, the variant “presents very little threat to you, very unlikely that you’re gonna get sick,” he said.

Full approval for vaccines

Full approval for vaccines from the US Food and Drug Administration could encourage more people to get vaccinated, Slavitt and other experts have said.

The current vaccines distributed in the US are authorized for emergency use only. Full approval for the Pfizer vaccine could come as early as this month, Slavitt said Tuesday.

On Thursday, Pfizer said it was seeing waning immunity from its vaccine. The company is now picking up its efforts to develop a booster dose that will protect people from variants.

“Based on the totality of the data they have to date, Pfizer and BioNTech believe that a third dose may be beneficial within 6 to 12 months following the second dose to maintain highest levels of protection,” the company said in a statement emailed to CNN.

Booster doses of vaccine

The company said booster doses of its vaccine, developed with BioNTech, produce levels of neutralizing antibodies that are five to 10 times higher than what’s produced after two doses.

And it added that it’s also developing a new formulation for a booster dose that may protect people from new variants more thoroughly.

A Pfizer spokesperson later told CNN the company planned to file for emergency use authorization for a booster dose with the FDA in August.

Cases and hospitalizations are up, CDC chief says

As of Thursday, less than half of the US population — 47.7% — was fully vaccinated. The percentage of eligible people who were fully vaccinated — ages 12 and up — was 55.8%.

Cases and hospitalizations are up especially in parts of the country where vaccination coverage is low, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a White House Covid-19 briefing Thursday.

Counties with the highest case rates tended to have low vaccination rates. In the last week, 173 counties had at least 100 cases per 100,000 residents — and in more than 90% of those counties, vaccination coverage was less than 40%, Walensky said.

“Many of these counties are also the same locations where the Delta variant represents the large majority of circulating virus,” Walensky said.

“Low vaccination rates in these counties, coupled with high case rates — and lax mitigation policies that do not protect those who are unvaccinated from disease — will certainly, and sadly, lead to more unnecessary suffering, hospitalizations and potentially deaths,” she added.

Case rate has been rising for the US

The case rate has been rising for the US as a whole.

The country averaged more than 15,060 new cases a day over a week ending Wednesday — 20.7% higher than the average from the week prior, according to Johns Hopkins data.

The average is still well below this spring’s peak — an average of 71,320 daily for a week ending April 14 — and the pandemic peak average of more than 251,000 daily for a week ending January 8.

Covid-19 hospitalizations also have been ticking up recently.

The number of Covid-19 patients in US hospitals was nearly 18,000 Tuesday, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

That’s slightly above the total of 16,792 two weeks earlier, though well below the pandemic peak of more than 136,000 on January 5.

California positivity rate triples

In California, where state data shows the Delta variant has been identified in roughly 43% of new sequenced specimens, the Covid-19 test positivity rate has tripled in the weeks since the state fully reopened.

The positivity rate has climbed past 2% for the first time since early March, after dropping to an all-time low of just 0.7% in early June.

So far, the influx in infections hasn’t immediately been reflected in a spike in hospitalizations or deaths — but officials warn those effects tend to lag behind by a couple of weeks.

Roughly 60% of people statewide have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, state data shows, while more than 9% are partially vaccinated.

5 largest undervaccinated clusters largely in the South

A new data analysis has identified clusters of unvaccinated people, most of them in the southern United States,that are vulnerable to surges in cases and could become breeding grounds for even more deadly Covid-19 variants.

The analysis by researchers at Georgetown University identified 30 clusters of counties with low vaccination rates and significant population sizes.

The five most significant of those clusters are sprawled across large swaths of the southeastern United States and a smaller portion in the Midwest.

The five clusters are largely in parts of eight states, starting in the east in Georgia and stretching west to Texas and north to southern Missouri.

The clusters include parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and are made up of mostly smaller counties but also cities such as Montgomery, Alabama; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Amarillo, Texas.

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