Covid-19 diary: Part 41

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
June 28, 2021

The state of the pandemic in America continues to improve. However, further progress is not guaranteed.

The nation is averaging nearly 11,700 new daily Covid-19 cases this month, the 15th-highest rate over the 18 months of the crisis. Only the first three months of 2020 were lower. Indeed, new daily cases for June 2021 are roughly half that of the 14th-highest figure — there were around 23,300 new daily cases in May 2020.

The Covid-19 mortality situation is similar. The daily death average for this month is 343.6 through Sunday, June 27. Again, that ranks 15th, higher only that January, February and March 2020. May 2020 ranks 14th with nearly 603 daily deaths.

Since peaking in January of this year at 259,616.1 new cases per diem and 3,351.7 new deaths per diem, the seven-day trends in these categories have respectively fallen more than 95 percent and more than 90 percent.

Covid-19 hospitalizations have dipped to slightly less than 17,000, matching the national level at the beginning of April 2020. That’s a decline of nearly 88 percent from the record of 137,484 hospitalizations on Jan. 10, 2021.

There are likely some mild Covid-19 cases that haven’t been reported. The U.S. is currently conducting around 580,000 daily Covid-19 tests, or about a third of peak levels in December 2020 and February and April 2021. But that reinforces the trend: There are many fewer serious Covid cases than we saw at the beginning of this year, when Americans were suffering the consequences of incautious holiday get-togethers and vaccine distribution had only just begun.

So that’s the good news. Unfortunately, there are some worrying indications.

First and foremost, daily vaccinations have declined 78 percent. At its height on April 16, around 3.3 million U.S. residents were being immunized each day. Right now, we’re seeing around 736,000 daily shots. This is concerning, since only 44 percent of all Americans are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The figure rises to 53 percent for Americans aged 12 and older and 56 percent for those 18 and older. (Vaccination shots have not yet been approved for those younger than 12, and approval for adolescents only arrived in mid-May.)

Photo by RF._.studio on Pexels.com

Even more worrisome is the advent of the Covid-19 variant known as the delta strain. Mutations make this version of the novel coronavirus at least 40 percent more infectious than the original. The virus that seemingly spread like wildfire in 2020 had an R-nought or R0 value of 2.5, meaning that many individuals could be infected by a single carrier. Delta’s R-nought, by contrast, is twice as high, opening the potential for exponential growth even beyond that of the standard novel coronavirus. After three generations of spread, the original disease could infect around 16 victims, while delta has the potential to reach 125.

Delta’s ability to spread rapidly is due to the fact that infection can take place through what Australian authorities call a “scarily fleeting” encounter. Contact tracers in New South Wales determined the origins of one Delta case using security camera footage that showed two people walking past one another at a Sydney shopping mall.

A public health official described the encounter as “someone moving across from each other for a moment — close, but momentary.”

“Literally people not even physically touching each other but fleetingly coming into the same airspace has seen the virus transfer from one person to another,” said Gladys Berejiklian, the New South Wales premier. “That’s how contagious it is.”

Australia ordered week-long lockdowns in parts of Sydney in response to the delta infections. The head of the Australian Medical Association has said that the entire city should be subject to a stay-at-home order.

In Israel, delta is believed to be responsible for a high proportion of that country’s surging caseload, where new infections jumped to their highest level in two and a half months. The nation reinstated mandatory face coverings only a week after they’d been lifted.

Delta accounted for nearly all of the United Kingdom’s new Covid-19 cases by mid-June, even as nearly 60 percent of all residents and close to 82 percent of all adults had been fully immunized. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed back his nation’s date for canceling Covid-19 containment measures by a month, from June 19 to July 19.

In response to delta’s rapid spread, the World Health Organization urged fully vaccinated individuals to keep up mask-wearing and other containment practices. “People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding,” said Dr. Mariangela Simao, a WHO assistant director-general. “This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated, when you have a community transmission ongoing.”

Notably, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to offer similar guidance, even though Covid-19 suppression measures have been fully lifted in 40 states. The CDC may be required to address the situation sooner rather than later. At the beginning of June, delta made up nearly 10 percent of the nation’s new Covid-19 infections.

The easiest way to battle delta will likely be vaccinations. An analysis by Scotland’s public health service shows that fully immunized individuals have high levels of protection from severe cases. Delta seems to more likely than the original novel coronavirus to send people who have received only one dose of the two-shot vaccines to the hospital.

We all wanted the summer of 2021 to be a season of celebration. Unfortunately, it may not be possible. We aren’t out of the woods yet, and we won’t do ourselves any favors by becoming complacent about the deadliest respiratory pandemic in a century.

Americans need to keep masking, washing hands, socially distancing and getting vaccinated. If we fail to do so, we could see the drop in Covid-19 deaths vanish in a gruesome summer surge.