The New York Times reporters Apoorva Mandavilli and Benjamin Mueller write that a spike in occurrence of Delta variants in some parts of US where vaccination rates are low and hesitancy to take a shot is widening the gulf between two Americas – vaccinated and unvaccinated.

“Though the new Covid numbers remain at some of the lowest levels since the beginning of the pandemic, but are once again slowly trending upward, prompting a debate about when booster shots might be needed to protect Americans,” they write.

Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told The Times “I think the United States has vaccinated itself out of a national coordinated surge, even though we do expect cases pretty much everywhere”.

Delta is creating a huge amount of noise, but I don’t think that it’s right to be ringing a huge alarm bell.

Bill Hanage, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (source: The New York Times)

Kristian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, reportedly told The Times “I don’t expect that we will get close to the kind of mayhem we saw earlier. There are going to be clusters, and they’re going to be in states where you have low vaccination rates. [..] The fact that Delta has arrived and done so well, so quickly, in these unvaccinated parts in the middle of the country suggests to me that the lion’s share of its advantage comes from this enhanced transmissibility.”

‘In a country that should be able to end its pandemic in short order with widespread vaccination, the Delta variant is well designed to take advantage of the cultural divide. The virus seems to combine the worst features of previous variants’, Andersen is quoted by The Times saying.

• US is ‘losing time’ in vaccination race as Delta variant becomes more pervasive
• The Delta variant widens the gulf between ‘two Americas’

US is ‘Losing Time’ Against Delta Variant

Cnn Health’s Madeline Holcombe writes in an a recent article that health experts suggests that winning the race against the Delta variant spread is only way to get more Americans vaccinated.

We’re losing time here. The Delta variant is spreading, people are dying, we can’t actually just wait for things to get more rational.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (source: CNN Health)

CNN Health write quoting Health fficials and experts that “disinformation is largely to blame for the high number of unvaccinated Americans, a group that is seeing the largest impacts of the pandemic”.

Dr Collins told CNN “Much of the data now shows that more than 99% of people currently hospitalized with Covid-19 are unvaccinated, Collins said. That means those who are vaccinated have enough protection that they aren’t getting severely ill”.

“I hope people will hear this, right now listening to this: If you are on the fence about whether vaccination is going to help you, listen to those numbers. Why are we waiting folks? Let’s roll up our sleeves if we haven’t already done so,” Dr. Collins added.