The Delta strain of covid-19 now makes up more than half of the cases in the US. Nevada requested a federal surge response team on July 1. Statewide, just over 60 percent of residents have not been vaccinated. The seven-day average of new cases is about double what it was a month ago when pandemic restrictions were relaxed. Nevada has the third highest cases per capita rate, 14 per 100,000. It trails only Missouri, which has also requested a surge response team, and Alabama. In Clark County, home to Las Vegas, only 39 percent of residents are fully vaccinated. As in many other places here and abroad, younger people are driving the surge. Not unexpectedly, 95 percent of people hospitalized in the past three month were unvaccinated.
New York City is scaling back covid monitoring and testing. In March and April, roughly 1,500 cases were sequenced every week. Now? Last week, only 54 were sequenced. In other words, there's no telling how prevalent the Delta variant might be there.
Summer camp may not be as much fun for some this year. More than 125 kids and adults who were at a Texas church camp last month have now tested positive. Many more were likely exposed at camp--there were 400 there--not to mention when infected campers and staff went home. The vaccination status of those infected was not known, but most of them were old enough to have been vaccinated. There have been 85 positive cases at an Indiana camp that did not check vaccination records nor require masks be work indoors. And 25 workers at a Christian summer camp in Oklahoma have tested positive.
One of the fastest growing outbreaks in the world right now is in Fiji. Before late May, new daily cases were in single digits; now, they're in the hundreds. About 31 percent of residents have been partially vaccinated, but less than five percent have been fully vaccinated. They're using AstraZeneca vaccine obtained from Australia. New Zealand has not approved AstraZeneca for export or use but is sending PPE and other needed things. Hospitals are so overcrowded that some people are staying away to die at home. If you doubt the power of the Delta variant, the outbreak in Fiji appears to be driven by one case of Delta that escaped from the country's isolation facilities. The government has so far declined to impose a lockdown but is arresting people who violate curfew or don't follow the mask mandate.
An analysis put out by the Israeli government says that the Pfizer vaccine appears to be less effective against the Delta variant than it is against other variants. The study says that Pfizer offers 64 percent efficacy against infection by the Delta strain but still offers 93 percent against severe disease or hospitalization. Some scientists and medical personnel say that it's too soon to draw conclusions from the study. Several other studies have looked at Pfizer's efficacy against Delta. A British study found Pfizer to be 88 percent effective; a Scottish one, 79 percent; and a Canadian one, 87 percent. Says an epidemiologist at Harvard, "If there are five studies with one outcome and one study with another, I think one can conclude that the five are probably more likely to be correct than the one."
The US has yet to meet POTUS's July 4 goal of 70 percent at least partial vaccination. In fact, the US may be hitting a ceiling on vaccinations. The people who want to get one probably have. The key group that still needs persuading is, not surprising if you've been reading here regularly, young adults 18 to 30. They feel "bulletproof" against the coronavirus; unfortunately, they are not.
2021 is my year for vaccinations. Besides the two Pfizer ones, I got a Shingrix vaccine to guard against shingles. Today I got the pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine. One more Shingrix shot in late August or September, and after that, a flu shot. The jury is still out on whether a covid booster might be on the agenda as well.
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