Experts Warn Unvaccinated Are Greatest Threat To Pandemic Recovery

By The Hill
Posted on 07/26/21 | News Source: The Hill

Experts are warning that the greatest threat to the pandemic recovery in the United States are the large swaths of Americans who remain unvaccinated. 

Over the past few weeks, the U.S. has seen a surge of coronavirus cases across the country in the wake of the highly infectious delta variant. The new strain has particularly wreaked havoc in states with low vaccination rates.

The state of Missouri has recently become a U.S. hot spot, averaging more than 2,100 cases per day over the last seven-day period, according to data from The New York Times. About 41 percent of the state population is fully vaccinated.

Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana and Nevada have also seen an increase in coronavirus cases.

The nationwide vaccination rate has also dropped following the mad dash for the vaccine earlier in the year. Health experts warn that unvaccinated individuals pose a risk to the country, and could spread the disease until other, vaccine-resistant strains arise.

Some say the U.S. has missed its chance at outrunning the delta strain.

“I think we probably could have done that here in the U.S., if we hadn't slowed our vaccination rates so much,” Andy Pekosz, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University, told The Hill.

“But I think it's important also to emphasize that variants will emerge anywhere the virus is replicating in people to a great degree. And globally, there are so many places where this virus is just freely infecting people and replicating and it's those situations that are going to be generating variants at a higher frequency.”

The delta variant isn’t even the only variant to worry about.

The lambda strain, first detected in Peru, is now present in the U.S. The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated this strain as a “variant of interest,” the designation beneath that of a “variant of concern,” like that of the delta variant.

Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Pekosz told The Hill that data on the lambda variant is limited at the moment, but what information is available suggests that it is similar to delta in that it is more transmissible than previously dominant strains like the alpha and beta variants. They added that vaccines should still offer protection against it.

At the same time, the lambda variant is not spreading as quickly as the delta variant.

“There's a lot that we do not yet know about the lambda variants, including compared to the delta,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University.