Delta Variant Exploits Low Vaccine Rates, Easing of Rules

[appalachiablue]

- June 11, 2021, healthcare workers administrate a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to students during a vaccination clinic hosted by Jewel Osco in Wheeling, Ill. The delta variant is adding new urgency to the drive to get more shots in arms and slow its supercharged spread.
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- Delta Variant Exploits Low Vaccine Rates, Easing of Rules -

By Lauran Neergaard, AP News, July 1, 2021. - Excerpts, Ed.

The latest alarming coronavirus variant is exploiting low global vaccination rates and a rush to ease pandemic restrictions, adding new urgency to the drive to get more shots in arms and slow its supercharged spread. The vaccines most used in Western countries still appear to offer strong protection against the highly contagious delta variant, first identified in India and now spreading in more than 90 other countries.

But the World Health Organization warned this week that the trifecta of easier-to-spread strains, insufficiently immunized populations and a drop in mask use and other public health measures before the virus is better contained will “delay the end of the pandemic.” The delta variant is positioned to take full advantage of those weaknesses.
"..With vaccines available across the country, the suffering and loss we are now seeing is nearly entirely avoidable,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said Thursday in urging more Americans to roll up their sleeves ahead of the mutant’s spread.

Parts of Europe have reinstated travel quarantines, several Australian cities are in outbreak-sparked lockdowns — and just as Japan readies for the Olympics, some visiting athletes are infected. The mutation is causing worry even in countries with relatively successful immunization campaigns that nonetheless haven’t reached enough people to snuff out the virus. The mutant has forced Britain, where nearly half the population is fully vaccinated, to postpone for a month, lifting its COVID-19 restrictions, as cases are doubling about every 9 days. With nearly half the U.S. population immunized, the CDC’s Walensky said about 1,000 counties, mostly in the Midwest and Southeast, with vaccination rates below 30% “are our most vulnerable.”

WHAT ABOUT MASKS? The WHO has urged governments not to lift pandemic restrictions too quickly — including saying everyone, even the vaccinated, should continue to wear masks given that the delta variant spreads more easily and no vaccine is 100% effective. In the U.S., the CDC maintains it still is safe for the fully vaccinated to go mask-free. But there’s no way to know if maskless people really are vaccinated and local governments can set tighter guidelines. This week, with the delta variant spreading locally, health officials in Los Angeles County said they still recommend masks indoors in public places for everyone...

Read More,

https://apnews.com/article/michael-brown-europe-coronavirus-pandemic-coronavirus-vaccine-science-e1379d34d3cdff0f522e0915b0f246fe



- June 11, 2021, customers wear face masks in an outdoor mall with closed business amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Los Angeles. The delta variant is adding new urgency to the drive to get more shots in arms and slow its supercharged spread.

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[appalachiablue]

2. Hi there, I hope things are good. Another

day at the DU ranch and ready for a break here.

[SheltieLover]

3. Lol I hear you!

[paleotn]

4. Forget kudzu....

Next up, the virus that ate the South. And the West. And parts of the Midwest.

[appalachiablue]

5. Covidzilla on the way. 'Get ready. Stock up.

You know the drill.' As a poster said.

NO JOKE