The Delta variant of COVID is continuing to cause infections and hospitalizations to rise across the country. While vaccinations continue to tick upwards, health experts are warning it’s not happening fast enough to slow the spread of COVID.
Florida, Texas and especially Louisiana continue to see huge numbers of infected patients in hospitals, and it is quickly overwhelming health care systems. In Louisiana, there are now a total of 499,942 confirmed coronavirus cases and 107,286 total "probable" coronavirus cases according to the state’s tracking system.
Dr. Michael Osterholm from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy joined John Hines on WCCO Radio Thursday to talk about the latest numbers and he shares that the numbers we’re seeing now are as bad as they were last winter.
“The case numbers are continuing to climb,” Osterholm says. “We know about the surges that have occurred in the Southern Sunbelt states. The big surge we had last January when everyone thought that it was done, we reported on any given day about 77,000 hospitalizations a day. That's where we're at right now. That's remarkable considering just a month ago we were less than 19,000 hospitalizations. So this has really come up quickly.”
According to Osterholm, Louisiana has the highest rate of infection in the world right now. Higher than any country despite the availability of vaccines. While the Southern states continue to experience the biggest surges, Osterholm is warning that data is pointing to those numbers starting to look similar in other states at well.
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“The challenge we have right now is what's going to happen,” Osterholm asks. “Is it's going to stay primarily in those Southern Sunbelt states? We're actually starting to see big increases in the Southeast, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. We're seeing it big right now in the Northwest, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. And we're starting to see increases here in the Upper Midwest and in Wisconsin and Minnesota.”
Osterholm says the main issue here is a large part of the country that still isn’t vaccinated.
“As long as we have the number of people unvaccinated that exists, there's over 90 million Americans who are eligible for vaccination that have not been vaccinated yet, we're going to continue to see this be just a tremendous challenge,” he says. “People have to understand that you can't run the game clock out on this one, the virus will eventually find you.”
As states track the cases, they’re finding almost all of the infections are the extremely contagious Delta variant. Osterholm says it’s overwhelming right now.
“We're actually following the genetics of these viruses that are causing the infections,” Osterholm said. “Right now in Minnesota, like we're seeing around the country, Delta really is one, two and three you might say. Over 90% of all the viruses in Minnesota right now cause people to become ill are Delta variants. In January, Alpha, a new variant appeared which was anywhere from 40 to 100% more infectious than the previous strains. Well along comes Delta and that basically edges Alpha out, and it's 40 to 60% more infectious than was Alpha. And so what we have right now is a highly infectious virus.”
The other issue with Delta, according to Osterholm, is the fact that they’re now seeing outdoor spreading of the virus.
“We've talked over the months about outdoor air and how it's a safer place to be,” Osterholm told Hines. “The virus dissipates in the movement of the air outside. That’s true, but there's been a big change. We are now seeing more and more outdoor activities where crowds are together. We saw a large art, and general festival in the Netherlands last month where out of 20,000 people who were supposedly protected from vaccination or having an antibody, a thousand cases. You saw the more than 500 cases associated with the Milwaukee Bucks NBA celebration, the day after they won the championship, all outdoors. Here in Minnesota, even our state health department up until June of this year through the first 16 to 17 months of the pandemic, we had four events in Minnesota associated with outdoor air transmission. Meaning people really close together. Since July, we've had nine at least. And it just gives you a sense that it's just more infectious outdoors even than it was indoors, and why we need to get people vaccinated.”
Osterholm is also defending the vaccine against those resistant to getting it, saying that there is no question that it has been proven safe.
“Let's just remember that these vaccines have been responsible for saving millions of lives. Millions. And that part is really important. Had we waited four, five years, we could have waited, try to get more and more information to be certain that we knew everything about these vaccines, and we would have lost all these people's lives. Right now, we're learning more about these vaccines, but let me be really clear. We're not learning about safety. The safety issues have been well-defined and we know the safety of these vaccines and the fact that getting infected is much, much, much more dangerous than anything that could happen as a side effect of the vaccine.”
Osterholm is not ready to say boosters are needed, but does add that the effectiveness of the vaccines are being studied and they still need to learn more about how they’ll react over a longer period of time.
Dr. Osterholm appears twice weekly on WCCO Radio. You can listen to him Monday at 7:20am on the WCCO Morning News and Thursday afternoons at 1:00pm on the Chad Hartman Show.
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