U.S. doubles down on vaccination efforts as Delta variant drives COVID-19 surge

NEW YORK. KAZINFORM The U.S. federal government is doubling down on COVID-19 vaccination efforts, including an ongoing plan for booster shots, while more unvaccinated people fell victims to the Delta variant in recent weeks, and the pandemic is believed by health experts to become a routine illness in the United States.

DANGER FOR UNVACCINATED

A surge in COVID-19 deaths caused by the highly contagious Delta variant is hitting working-age people hard while highlighting the risks for people who remain unvaccinated, reported The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Monday, Xinhua reports.

Federal data showed that COVID-19 deaths among people under 55 have roughly matched highs near 1,800 a week set during last winter's surge. These data showed weekly tallies for overall COVID-19 deaths, meanwhile, remain well under half of the pandemic peak near 26,000 reached in January.

The seven-day average for newly reported COVID-19 deaths each day recently eclipsed 1,600, up from an average that briefly moved below 220 a day in early July. With roughly 660,000 known COVID-19 deaths to date, the United States is on track to «soon top the estimated 675,000 deaths that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has linked to the 1918-19 flu pandemic,» said the report.

High vaccination rates among the elderly, who are more vulnerable to severe COVID-19 outcomes, are restraining the overall increase in deaths, and the change is shifting a larger share of deaths to younger populations with lower vaccination rates, underscoring the need to get more people inoculated to curb the pandemic, WSJ quoted experts as saying.

Deaths have been concentrated among the unvaccinated, federal data show. The CDC released studies on Friday showing that unvaccinated Americans were 4.6 times as likely to be infected, 10 times as likely to be hospitalized and 11 times as likely to die.

VACCINATION FOR IMMUNITY

COVID-19 may become a routine illness like a common cold or the flu one day, another WSJ report on Monday quoted virologists and epidemiologists as saying. But it will take a lot to get there, and the ferocious spread of the Delta variant that has filled hospitals again showed how challenging that path could be.

«While surges are easing in some states, cases are rising in others. Delta is moving the world toward immunity against the virus at huge cost. With every new infection it is raising the risk of incubating a variant that might spread even faster, sicken with greater ferocity or evade vaccines,» said the report.