The United States enters Labor Day with Covid vaccines, but with a substantially worse outbreak than last year

The United States is heading into Labor Day weekend with just over four times as many cases of Covid-19 and more than twice as many hospitalizations as this time last year, despite efforts to vaccinate 62% of the population. American population.

The United States and the world are nowhere near where health officials waited and thought we would be in the pandemic for 20 months, and more than eight months after deploying vaccines that then had efficacy rates around 95%. While the outbreak is significantly worse for most measures than in 2020, U.S. preparedness for a hard fall, delta variant, vaccines and open schools make it difficult to predict how the pandemic will develop, doctors say. the scientists.

“At the moment there is a lot more uncertainty. The dynamic interaction between the variants and the vaccine and particularly people who are not vaccinated, and the type of game changer of the delta variant leads to a lot of uncertainty regarding the fall, “said Dr. Barbara Taylor, assistant dean and infectious disease specialist at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised unvaccinated Americans not to travel during the holiday weekend, worried that the holidays could start another wave in the cases.

Heading into Labor Day 2020, the United States was down from a summer wave in which the average daily case peaked at around 67,000 daily in July to an average of just over 41,000 new cases. per day the week before Labor Day, data compiled by Johns Hopkins College Shows. This week’s new cases have peaked since January, averaging 166,000 daily over the past seven days.

However, new cases are increasing at a substantially slower pace than in recent weeks and many scientists predict that they will soon begin to decline. New cases rose 7% last week, nearly a third from the seven-day jump from 26% just three weeks ago, according to the data.

“It is true that cases, hospitalizations and deaths are at higher levels than last Labor Day, especially for mostly southern states. It was very surprising because we now have highly effective vaccines,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization (WHO). Collaborating center in national and global health law.

However, the effectiveness of the three vaccines discarded for use in the United States (Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson) has declined since they were first introduced. Scientists have found that protection decreases over time. The highly contagious delta variant also changes the game. According to the CDC, it spreads more easily and more quickly than other variants, infecting both unvaccinated and vaccinated people.

The viral load in the nasal cavity is so high, estimated at 1,000 times that of other strains, that Australian scientists say they located a case in which a man contracted it with just 5 to 10 seconds of exposure. The small fraction of fully vaccinated people receiving Covid, even an asymptomatic case, are as capable of spreading it as unvaccinated people, officials have warned. The delta variant now accounts for 99% of all new sequenced cases in the United States

“The delta variant, as we have seen with the evolution of Covid-19 over the last year and a half, remains a curve and I think the best advice is to be prudent and careful,” said Drs. Nusheen Ameenuddin, a community pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic, said in an interview.

The good news is that the delta seems to be on its way to America, running out of new people to become infected as vaccination rates rise and others gain natural immunity after recovering from the virus, doctors and doctors say. scientists.

New hospital admissions have finally begun to change after weeks of steady rises, with an average of seven days of daily admissions down 1.7% over the past week, according to CDC data. However, more than 100,000 Americans are currently hospitalized, compared to about 41,000 during the same week a year ago, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, in line with levels observed in late January this year. year.

The big question is how long immunity lasts. Studies show that vaccines begin to decline in effectiveness about two months after the second short and then actually decrease protection five to eight months after full vaccination, according to U.S. officials.

“We may see periodic waves there until there is sufficient protection at the community level, and we expect it to occur through vaccination rather than the recovery from a natural infection,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a physician at infectious diseases, University of Toronto. “I know we all want the pandemic to end, but it’s not. We’re closer to the end in countries with access to vaccines, but it’s not over.”