In the middle of a slight hike COVID-19 Across the country, officials cited the delta variant as a driving factor in the new cases. An expert also noted anecdotal reports showing that in hospitalized patients, the disease progresses more rapidly than the previous type.
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“It has become clear that this is a very dangerous virus and even more dangerous than the original virus,” Dr. Ricardo Franco, MD, MD, of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) said at a briefing Tuesday.
Franco, who noted that about 97% of hospitalized patients at UAB were not immunized, said the delta variant pushed the threshold for herd immunity higher due to increased transmission.
He also noted that although the virus behaved more dangerously than previous strains, the vast majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths involved unvaccinated people in areas with high and low vaccination rates, meaning the vaccine is working.
“The data show that vaccinated people are eight times less likely to develop a delta infection compared to unvaccinated people,” he said. “[A vaccinated person] He is 25 times less likely to be hospitalized, and if he is hospitalized, he is 25 times less likely to die from COVID-19.”
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The higher the number of vaccinations, he says, the more likely it is that unvaccinated people will benefit from herd immunity.
Franco added that the median age of patients admitted to his hospital and elsewhere was smaller than that observed in previous increases in COVID-19. Across the country, children’s hospitals reported an increasing trend among younger children who were not yet eligible for vaccination.
Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, vice dean for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the Institute for Health Transformation, added that the observed age shift may be due to higher vaccination rates among older adults, especially among those over 65. year.
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“When you have a large number of people infected, even if the hospitalization and death rates are low, that number is going to go up,” he said, adding that he didn’t think the United States “had good care for repeat cases among them. young adult.”
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