US COVID-19 cases rising rapidly as Delta dominates
Despite having among the highest availability of vaccines of any country, America’s immunisation campaign has dropped steeply since April; France warns its nationals against travelling to Spain or Portugal
Covid cases are rising rapidly in the United States as the highly contagious Delta variant dominates and vaccinations stagnate, data showed on Wednesday.
The seven-day-average of new cases was 13,859 as of July 6, up 21 per cent compared to two weeks earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cases atributed to the most recent days might rise further because of a reporting lag following the July 4 holiday weekend.
The spike comes as the Delta variant, which is more transmissible than any previous strain, accounted for around 52 per cent of cases in the two weeks ending July 3, according to the CDC.
Despite having among the highest availability of vaccines of any country, America’s immunization campaign has dropped off steeply since April.
President Joe Biden narrowly missed his goal of having 70 per cent adults at least partly vaccinated by Independence Day, with the current figure at 67 per cent.
Regions in the Midwest and South with lower vaccination rates are experiencing higher case rates than regions with high vaccination rates such as the Northeast, a trend that has become increasingly clear in recent weeks.
A hospital in Springfield, Missouri, ran out of ventilators to treat hospitalized Covid patients over the weekend, local media reported.
The city of 160,000’s two hospitals were treating 213 COVID-19 patients as of Monday, up from 168 on Friday and 31 on May 24, the Kansas City Star said.
“The trajectory that we’re likely to see is two different flavors of the pandemic in the United States, one in which it’s more of a problem in places where there’s a high level of unvaccinated individuals,” Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins centre for Health Security said.
“In other parts of the country, the pandemic is largely going to be something that’s managed as more of an ordinary respiratory virus,” he added.
Adalja said that even with Delta becoming the dominant strain he envisioned a “decoupling” of hospitalisations and deaths from rising cases in highly vaccinated regions, as has been seen in Israel.
“Increasingly, I think we have to start to shit our focus away from cases and really look at hospitalisations, because that’s what the vaccine was designed to do -- it was designed to decouple cases from hospitalisation,” he said.
Real world data has shown that the Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Astrazeneca vaccines have retained high efficacy against severe Covid and the same is almost certainly true of the Moderna vaccine, according to experts.
France warned its nationals on Thursday against travelling to Spain or Portugal on holiday because of a spike in Covid-19 cases caused by the highly contagious Delta variant.
France currently allows people to travel to all other EU members as long as they are fully vaccinated or present a negative PCR or antigen test on their return.
But Europe Minister Clement Beaune pointedly advised the French against crossing the Pyrenees mountains to Spain or Portugal.
“For those who have not yet booked their holidays, avoid Spain and Portugal as a destination,” he told France 2 television. “It’s beter to remain in France or go to other countries.”
Beaune added that France, which fears being hit by a fourth wave of coronavirus infections this summer, was weighing restrictions on travel in Europe over the spread of the highly infectious Delta mutation.
“We have to be careful... the pandemic is not over,” he said. “We will decide in the coming days, but we could put in place reinforced measures.”
Germany already has a ban on incoming travellers from Portugal, where the Delta variant has become dominant. Only its own citizens or residents are allowed in from Portugal, and they must quarantine for two weeks upon arrival.
Beaune said France was “closely following the situation in countries where the flare-up (in infections) is very fast,” singling out the Spanish region of Catalonia, where Barcelona is situated and “where many French people go to party and for holidays.”
The Catalonia region this week reimposed curbs on nightlife to try to tame a surge in infections, especially among unvaccinated young people.