Delta stalks unvaccinated
Unwilling to get vaccinated? Be prepared for COVID-19 to be around — and increasingly dangerous — for the foreseeable future.
The reason is the highly contagious, deadly Delta variant.
“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned last week.
And unless Canada can overcome its own vaccine hesitancy within its population, resurgent COVID outbreaks now plaguing other countries will also inevitably strike here.
In the U.S., where immunization efforts, after a fast start, stalled in recent months, COVID-19 cases in all 50 states are again on the rise.
The Delta variant is behind more than half of all new U.S. infections. Outbreaks are occurring where vaccination rates are low and vaccine hesitancy is high. Many jurisdictions have reimposed restrictions to try to regain control.
U.S. President Joe Biden has rightly slammed Facebook and other social media for contributing to vaccine hesitancy by spreading misinformation.
As in Canada, the vast majority of hospitalized U.S. patients — and virtually all deaths — involve the unvaccinated.
In many countries that hoped the pandemic was on its last legs, new infections, fuelled by the Delta variant, are again rising rapidly; in the U.K., 99 per cent of COVID19 cases involve Delta.
There is good news here.
Canada just surpassed the U.S. in percentage of fully vaccinated people, 49 per cent to 48 per cent. We’re also way ahead in rates of people with at least one shot — 70 per cent vs. around 55 per cent.
New daily cases are below 400, the lowest in a year. That’s great, but nowhere near good enough. Experts are revising estimates of how much of the population needs to be immunized to achieve herd immunity — the level where viral transmission stalls and those who aren’t, or can’t be, vaccinated are nevertheless protected.
Earlier projections, based on the original coronavirus’s transmissibility, hypothesized 75 to 80 per cent would be enough. But some experts now say herd immunity could require up to 90 per cent, due to the more infectious Delta variant.
Canada’s rate of first doses has also been slowing, despite millions of Canadians still being unvaccinated.
If fully vaccinated rates here don’t get much higher, Canada — like other countries — could face a devastating fourth wave.
Numerous studies show currently approved vaccines are highly effective against the Delta variant in preventing serious illness, hospitalization and deaths.
Vaccine hesitancy seems highest among 18- to 29-year-olds, in rural areas and among Black Canadians.
The greatest danger is that, as the mutated coronavirus rips through unvaccinated and under-vaccinated portions of our populations, new and potentially even deadlier variants may be spawned.