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Washington – As the United States continues to make its way through the Covid-19 pandemicFormer Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb said parts of the country could experience “very dense epidemics” with the issues of concern Delta variant continues to circulate.
“It’s going to be hyper-regionalized, where there are certain pockets of the country [where] we can have very dense epidemics, “Gottlieb told CBS News on Sunday” “Confront the nation. ”
The most vulnerable areas continue to be those with low vaccination rates and immunity rates against previous infections. According to Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention, many southern states have vaccination rates below the national average.
“I think when you look across the United States, if you’re a community that has low vaccination rates and you also think there was low immunity against a previous infection, then the virus didn’t not really crossed the local population, these communities are vulnerable, ”he said. “So I think the governors need to think about how they are building health care resources in areas of the country where you still have a lot of vulnerability.”
Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a state where hospital admissions have increased by 30%, has expressed concern about the Delta COVID-19 variant and low vaccination rates in his state.
“The Delta variant is of great concern to us. We are seeing that this has an impact on the increase in our cases and hospitalizations ”, Hutchinson said on “Face the Nation”. The governor also noted that vaccine reluctance is high in his state, which he attributed to conspiracy theories, the Johnson & Johnson one-shot diet hiatus in April, and individuals simply not believing not to the effectiveness of the virus.
The Delta variant, first discovered in India, has now been found in 49 states and Washington, DC. The variant is more transmissible and can lead to more serious illness than other strains of the coronavirus.
In UK, Delta variant now accounts for 99% of new COVID cases, according to Public health England. Gottlieb says the US is only a month or two behind the UK in terms of experience with the variant.
“They see the cases growing. They certainly don’t take off with the same speed we’ve seen in past epidemics. The other thing we’re seeing about the UK experience right now is that it’s not having the same impact. So they had about 90,000 cases, they had about 1,000 hospitalizations. The vast majority are unvaccinated people. Only 8% of people who have been fully vaccinated are hospitalized patients, ”Gottlieb said. “And so you have a situation where you have a population that has more immunity, not only from vaccination, but also from previous infection. It therefore does not have the same impact in terms of death and serious illness as in the last epidemic. ”
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