US coronavirus: The rise in US Covid-19 hospitalizations is a self-inflicted wound, expert says

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“This is a self-inflicted wound because we can prevent all of these hospitalizations and deaths – or at least 98.99% of them – if we can promote vaccinations,” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said CNN’s Jim Acosta.

The US government has purchased an additional 200 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, BioNTech said in a press release on Friday. More than half should arrive by the end of the year, the rest by May next year. This would bring the total number of cans supplied by Pfizer to 500 million.

Only 48.8% of the US population is fully vaccinated, and the average 7-day pace is about 252,000. According to CDC data, the average has not exceeded 500,000 fully vaccinated people per day since July 5.

“We all think that another increase is likely,” said Dr. Christian Sandrock, director of intensive care at UC Davis Medical Center, in a statement Thursday. “It’s scary. I don’t think the vaccine will make us go back to the worst we’ve seen, but it’s hard to say.”

Lorena Garcia, professor of epidemiology at UC Davis, said the impact could be utterly devastating for rural communities with lower vaccination rates and limited access to health care.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate at 33.9%, according to CDC figures. Mississippi also vaccinated less than 35%.

After a press conference Thursday, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey encouraged people to get vaccinated.

“These people choose to live a horrific, self-inflicted lifestyle,” she said. “It is time to blame the unvaccinated people, not the normal people. It is the unvaccinated people who let us down. “

In Missouri, additional staff and equipment are being sent to Springfield-Greene County to support the local health system, Missouri Governor Mike Parson announced Thursday.

A return to masks

Some regions are returning to masks in hopes of slowing the spread.

In Texas, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo warned that the area “is at the beginning of a potentially very dangerous fourth wave of this pandemic,” raised the threat level from yellow to orange and urged community members to wear masks.

“So, I know you feel uncomfortable, I don’t wear masks either, but until we get the numbers down, let’s all wear masks again,” said the judge of Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city.

As per Austin-Travis County’s risk-based Covid-19 guidelines, indoor masks are recommended for all vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Austin Mayor Steve Adler says that if he “could order all children and teachers to mask themselves without going to court,” he would “do it in no time.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order in May banning state agencies such as counties from requiring the wear of masks.

The number of hospital admissions has passed the threshold of over 30 admissions a day, officials say.

The CDC still recommends that unvaccinated individuals wear masks, but the choice is individual if they are vaccinated, said Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Thursday.

“When you are vaccinated you get exceptional protection from the vaccines, but you have the option to choose to add extra layers of protection if you choose,” she said.

Experts also express concern about vaccinated Americans

Experts warn that even vaccinated people will have to worry about the increase.

“If you have all kinds of viruses around you, if you are in a community with a lot of viruses, then because these vaccines are not 100% you are going to have an impact,” said Dr. CNN’s medical analyst Leana Wen told Anderson Cooper on Thursday.At this time of summer, transmission rates should be low, CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta said on the same show. With the warm weather in July, people mostly circulate outside, where the virus is less likely to spread, he said.

If the drier, colder weather comes in autumn and winter, transmission rates could increase even further, added Gupta.

“So that could be as good as possible, at least for a while,” he said.

In people who are vaccinated, their immune systems are much better equipped to protect them from the virus, but not perfectly, Gupta said. Some may not get symptoms if infected, but some could end up being protected from hospitalization and still get sick, he said.

We compared vaccination to putting on a seat belt: it’s an important protective layer, but it’s not foolproof against the reckless behavior of others.

“But saying that doesn’t mean undermining confidence in seat belts. It just means that the decisions other people make affect us too, ”Wen said.

Vaccine effectiveness against Delta

Walensky said Thursday the Delta variant is an “aggressive and highly transmissible” strain of the virus.

“It’s one of the most contagious respiratory viruses we know, and I’ve seen it in my 20-year career,” Walensky said at a briefing for the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

The spread of the variant makes vaccination even more important, said Walensky.

“If you haven’t been vaccinated, please take the Delta variant seriously. This virus has no incentive to wear off and it remains on the lookout for the next person at risk to infect it,” she said.

According to CDC data released earlier this week, the Delta variant makes up an estimated 83% of all coronavirus samples sequenced in the past two weeks. The good news is that data shows that vaccines work against the variant as in clinical trials, Walensky said.

Los Angeles County’s health director called the Delta variant a “game changer” because about 20% of the roughly 4,000 new cases reported in the county in June were among fully vaccinated individuals.

Most of those vaccinated had only mild symptoms, said Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

While cases are increasing in vaccinated people too, the increase is much smaller and much slower than that of unvaccinated people, Ferrer said, adding that unvaccinated people are more than five times more at risk than vaccinated people.

She said the county’s case rate would be higher if it weren’t for the number of residents who were vaccinated.

CNN’s Carma Hassan, Virginia Langmaid, Sarah Moon, Cheri Mossburg and Raja Razek contributed to this report.

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