The delta variant, the most recent of the coronavirus, is taking advantage of low vaccination rates and the rush to ease restrictions from the pandemic, giving new urgency to efforts to inoculate more people and slow its rapid spread.
Vaccines most widely used in Western countries still appear to offer strong protection against this highly contagious variant, first identified in India and currently spreading in more than 90 countries.
But the World Health Organization warned this week that the combination of more easily spread strains, insufficiently immunized populations, and a decline in the use of masks and other public health measures before the virus is better contained “will delay the end of the pandemic ”.
The delta variant is in a position to take full advantage of those weaknesses.
“Any suffering or death from COVID-19 is tragic. With vaccines available across the country, the suffering and losses we are now seeing are almost entirely preventable, ”Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday, calling for more Americans to get vaccinated before the mutation spreads.
Faced with concerns about the variance, parts of Europe have re-implemented travel quarantines, several Australian cities are in lockdown due to the outbreak and, as Japan prepares for the Olympics, some visiting athletes are infected. The mutation is causing consternation even in countries with relatively successful vaccination campaigns that, however, have not reached enough people to end the virus.
For example, the mutation has forced Britain, where nearly half the population is fully vaccinated, to postpone its much-anticipated lifting of COVID-19 restrictions by a month, as cases are doubling roughly every nine. days.
In the United States, “we are still vulnerable from these outbreaks and rebounds,” said Dr. Hilary Babcock of the University of Washington in St. Louis.
The variants “are capable of finding any gap in our protection,” he said, noting how hospital beds and intensive care units in southwestern Missouri counties – where there are fewer vaccinated people in the state – are suddenly filling up, most with adults under 40 who have never been vaccinated.
At a time when nearly half of the United States population is immunized, Walensky noted that roughly a thousand counties, most in the north-central and southeastern region, with vaccination rates below 30% “are our most vulnerable ”.
But the variant represents the greatest danger in countries where vaccinations are rare. Cases in Africa are increasing faster than ever, in part due to the mutation, the WHO reported Thursday, while areas of Bangladesh bordering India are also seeing an increase driven by the variant. The Fiji Islands, which suffered only two deaths in the first year of the pandemic, are now experiencing a significant outbreak attributed to the variant, and Afghanistan is desperately searching for oxygen supplies because of it.
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Associated Press journalists Maria Cheng in London and Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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