Dr. Scott Gottlieb says U.S. is ‘vastly underestimating’ level of Covid delta spreadDr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday he believes the U.S. is significantly undercounting the number of Covid delta infections, making it difficult to know whether the highly transmissible strain is causing higher-than-expected hospitalization and death rates.
“We don’t know what the denominator is right now,” Gottlieb said in an interview on “Squawk Box.” “I think we’re vastly underestimating the level of delta spread right now because I think people who are vaccinated, who might develop some mild symptoms or might develop a breakthrough case, by and large are not going out and getting tested. If you’ve been vaccinated and you develop a mild cold right now, you don’t think you have Covid.”
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. have been rising due to the delta variant, with the seven-day average of new daily infections standing at 26,448, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s up 67% from a week ago. The weekly average of new daily deaths is up 26% from a week ago, to 273, according to CNBC’s analysis.
“There’s no clear evidence that this is more pathogenic, that it’s causing more serious infections. It’s clearly more virulent, it’s clearly far more contagious” than earlier virus strains, said Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer.
If younger Americans are becoming sick with the delta variant at higher levels compared with previous points in the pandemic, it’s because “younger people remain unvaccinated,” Gottlieb contended. “When people who are vaccinated do get infected, and there are breakthrough infections, they don’t get as sick. They have protection against severe disease.”
Delta is now the most-common coronavirus strain in the U.S., making up more than 57% of cases in the two weeks from June 20 to July 3. That’s the latest available window on the CDC’s website.
U.S. health officials have sounded the alarm for weeks about the variant’s potential to cut into hard-earned progress in reducing infection rates, which plummeted in the spring as America’s vaccination campaign hit its stride. As of Friday, 48.3% of the country’s population was fully vaccinated and nearly 56% had received at least one dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Covid vaccination coverage is higher among the most-vulnerable group of Americans: the elderly. More than 79% of people age 65 and up are fully vaccinated and nearly 89% have had at least one dose, according to the CDC.
The vast majority of U.S. counties with high infection rates right now — defined as at least 100 new cases over the last seven days per 100,000 residents — have vaccinated under 40% of their residents, according to a CNBC analysis completed earlier this week.
In Los Angeles County, officials on Thursday responded to an uptick in cases by reinstating an indoor mask mandate, even for fully vaccinated people. LA County, the nation’s most populous, had lifted its previous mask requirement about a month ago, in conjunction with the state of California ending most of its remaining pandemic restrictions.
Gottlieb said he does not expect many other state or local governments to follow LA County and begin putting in place already-lifted mitigation measures “because there’s not going to be a lot of support for mandates at this point.”
“People who are worried about Covid have largely been vaccinated. I realize not everyone has been able to get vaccinated, but most people have been vaccinated who are worried about this infection,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.
“People who remain unvaccinated aren’t worried about the infection and don’t want to be wearing masks either. Now, the bottom line, that means this is just going to spread through the population,” he added.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/16/dr-scott-gottlieb-says-us-is-vastly-underestimating-level-of-covid-delta-spread.htmlNIH director ‘most worried’ about Missouri’s COVID-19 spread compared to any stateMissouri is the spot on the map raising alarms for federal officials as the COVID-19 delta variant surges in the Midwest and South.
“When I look at the map Missouri actually jumps out as the place that I’m most worried about because there’s a lot of cases now happening very rapidly,” Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told McClatchy in an interview Thursday.
“This is a variant, this delta variant, that’s highly contagious. And so as it starts to spread, anybody who’s not vaccinated is in a danger zone… The chances of getting infected in Missouri are getting really high and that means potentially serious illness or even death,” said Collins, whose agency is the federal government’s primary medical research arm.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) is now reporting an average of nearly 1,200 confirmed new cases each day, compared to fewer than 400 a month ago. The state is behind only Arkansas in its per-capita rate of new cases, according to data compiled by The New York Times.
At the same time, Missouri continues to struggle with low vaccination rates in many areas. It has the 13th worst vaccination rate among all states.
Rural Missouri, in particular, has lagged in vaccination rates, a trend that has also been persistent in other states. In Pulaski County, for example, only 14.3 % of people have received their first dose of the vaccine, according to state health data. CDC data shows that nearly 40% of residents have received at least one dose, however, likely because of vaccinations conducted at a military base in the county.
“I grew up on a farm and I appreciate people in rural counties tend to be pretty independent-minded and that’s good. And maybe therefore do have less access to medical care and less likely to depend on it, maybe a little more suspicious about messages coming from governments or from the big city,” said Collins, who was raised on a farm in rural Virginia.
“But boy this is the case where this virus doesn’t really care whether you’re in a rural community or city community. And people in rural communities in Missouri and elsewhere are now getting sick and large numbers.”
Southwest Missouri is the epicenter of the latest wave, and rising hospitalizations are pushing medical providers in Springfield to the breaking point. Local officials on Wednesday asked DHSS and the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) to fund an alternative care site as COVID patients begin to overwhelm the city’s two major hospitals, CoxHealth and Mercy.
The facilities are treating more virus patients than they did during Missouri’s previous pandemic peak this past winter. As of Thursday morning, CoxHealth had 139 COVID-positive patients and Mercy had 129. Mercy Springfield Chief Administrative Officer Erik Frederick tweeted that 16 virus patients at the hospital have died so far this week.
“We went from virtually zero patients to about 100-plus in about seven months in the first couple waves, and in this wave we went from, at least at Cox, about 14 patients seven weeks ago to about 130 today,” CoxHealth CEO Steve Edwards said at a Wednesday news conference. “So the ramp up time has been accelerated, almost triple.”
Late Wednesday, DHSS spokeswoman Lisa Cox said in an email that DHSS is working with SEMA and local officials “to determine how we will best meet the current health care needs of the community.”
COMBATING MYTHSCollins pointed to myths about the vaccines that have circulated on social media as a driving factor in deterring people
from getting vaccinated.
“Some people were worried the vaccine might cause infertility. There’s been a lot of stuff on the internet about that,” Collins said. “There’s absolutely no evidence for that in men or in women. We now have tens of thousands of pregnant women who have been immunized and we have no indication that that’s causing any problem with the pregnancy.”
During Thursday’s White House briefing, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that online misinformation was costing lives and called for social media companies to enforce stronger content moderation standards to curb the spread of inaccurate claims about vaccines and the virus.
In an interview later in the day, Murthy pointed to Missouri as a state where President Joe Biden’s administration was steering resources to increase vaccinations and slow transmission rates.
“Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada and other states in the Midwest and the mountain region of our country are now struggling with a rising number of cases, rising number of hospitalizations,” Murthy told McClatchy.
"This is what delta will do. It will continue to spread. It’s the most transmissible version of COVID-19 that we have seen to date,” Murthy said. “But what we do know, and the good news is that, the vaccines work against the delta variant. So that’s why it’s so important that we get people vaccinated, especially in parts of our country where vaccination rates are still low.”
Collins said some people have avoided vaccinations because they already had COVID, but he said these people still need to get vaccinated, especially to protect against variants.
“The vaccine gives you even a better shot at avoiding getting reinfected with this delta variant. Simply having COVID before is not nearly as reliable as having COVID plus the vaccine,” Collins said.
Collins emphasized the spread in southern Missouri poses a threat to Kansas City and St. Louis as well.
“What we’ve seen in every other surge — and we’ve had way too many of them — is that the things that are nearby geographically are at highest risk and people move around and they bring the virus with them, so nobody in that general vicinity should feel as if this is just a problem for some people in the rural community,” Collins said.
"This is a problem for the whole area. This is a problem for the whole nation,” Collins said. “Basically, somebody once said, we had a division in the country between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Or maybe we have a division between people who are vaccinated and people who are sick, because that’s the direction we’re going.”
Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt lamented Missouri’s low vaccination rate during a news conference Wednesday.
“We’re in a fight now, here and throughout the world frankly, where it’s sort of vaccine versus variant. The way you don’t have all these new strains is you don’t give the virus anywhere to live and become more resilient,” said Blunt, who comes from Springfield where the virus is surging.
Blunt’s strong exhortations to get vaccinated are in stark contrast to fellow Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who has offered a mixed message in recent weeks and panned the Biden administration’s vaccination outreach efforts.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that she couldn’t make an assessment about why rural Missouri had fallen far behind the rest of the region in vaccination rates. But she called for elected officials to avoid polarizing the issue.
“We need to be clear and direct about our messaging. There is misinformation out there. Sometimes that’s traveling on platforms. Sometimes that’s traveling, unfortunately, out of the mouth of elected officials,” Psaki said Wednesday.
“So, it’s really case by case, but the most important thing we can do is not see this as a partisan issue because, certainly, the virus is killing people, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.”
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article252806518.htmlMissouri Covid-19 Hospitalizations Reach Levels Not Seen Since Winterhttps://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/missouri-covid-19-hospitalizations-reach-levels-not-seen-since-winter/article_5b13ac28-fdd7-519f-baa5-f311f21f9434.htmlNew Florida COVID-19 cases nearly double over last week; positivity rate jumpshttps://www.fox13news.com/news/new-florida-covid-19-cases-nearly-double-over-last-week-positivity-rate-jumpsAfter teen daughter hospitalized with Covid, mom regrets saying no to vaccine
"It's heartbreaking. I wish I would've made better choices for her," said an Arkansas mother of her 13-year-old daughter, hospitalized with Covid-19https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/after-teen-daughter-hospitalized-covid-mom-regrets-saying-no-vaccine-n1274227
