Delta Variant Effect: US Cases Rising, Sydney Sees Worst Day Of 2021; All You Need To Know

Covid cases are rising rapidly in USA as the Delta variant dominates and vaccinations stagnate, data showed as per AFP.

The seven-day-average of new cases was 13,859 as of July 6, up 21 percent compared to two weeks earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Cases attributed to the most recent days might rise further because of a reporting lag following the July 4 holiday weekend.

The spike comes as the Delta variant, which is more transmissible than any previous strain, accounted for around 52 percent of cases in the two weeks ending July 3, according to the CDC.

Agencies

Struggling to combat infection

Despite having among the highest availability of vaccines of any country, America's immunization campaign has dropped off steeply since April.

President Joe Biden narrowly missed his goal of having 70 percent adults at least partly vaccinated by Independence Day, with the current figure at 67 percent.

Regions in the Midwest and South with lower vaccination rates are experiencing higher case rates than regions with high vaccination rates such as the Northeast, a trend that has become increasingly clear in recent weeks.

Agencies

An uphill battle

A hospital in Springfield, Missouri, ran out of ventilators to treat hospitalized Covid patients over the weekend, local media reported.

The city of 160,000's two hospitals was treating 213 COVID-19 patients as of Monday, up from 168 on Friday and 31 on May 24, the Kansas City Star said.

"The trajectory that we're likely to see is two different flavors of the pandemic in the United States, one in which it's more of a problem in places where there's a high level of unvaccinated individuals," Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told AFP.

"In other parts of the country, the pandemic is largely going to be something that's managed as more of an ordinary respiratory virus," he added.

AFP

Adalja said that even with Delta becoming the dominant strain he envisioned a "decoupling" of hospitalizations and deaths from rising cases in highly vaccinated regions, as has been seen in Israel.

"Increasingly, I think we have to start to shift our focus away from cases and really look at hospitalizations, because that's what the vaccine was designed to do -- it was designed to decouple cases from hospitalization," he said.

Agencies

Real-world data has shown that the Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines have retained high efficacy against severe Covid and the same is almost certainly true of the Moderna vaccine, according to experts.

Sydney hit hard

Australia's New South Wales reported its biggest daily rise in locally acquired cases of COVID for the year as officials struggle to stamp out a growing cluster the Delta variant in Sydney, as per Reuters

New South Wales (NSW) reported 38 new local cases, up from 27 a day earlier, as its capital Sydney prepares for the third week of a lockdown.

"We don't want to prolong the lockdown, we don't want to see Sydney or New South Wales going in and out of lockdown until we have the vast majority of our population vaccinated," NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

Berejiklian implored residents to limit visits to family as data suggested the virus was spreading during such meetings, and urged people with flu-symptoms to take their entire family for COVID-19 tests due to the highly transmissible Delta strain.

Reuters

The situation going from bad to worse

She has promised this would be the last lockdown Sydney would need to endure in the pandemic although only around 10% of the country has been fully vaccinated.

Of Thursday's cases, 26 were either in isolation throughout or for part of their infectious period, while 11 spent time in the community while they were infectious. One case is under investigation.

Total infections neared 400 amid the largest outbreak of 2021 in the state, since the first case was detected in the city more than three weeks ago in a limousine driver who transported overseas airline crew.

Agencies

A strict stay-at-home order had been enforced in Sydney, Australia's largest city and home to a fifth of the country's 25 million population, since June 26 for two weeks restricting people's movements and limiting gatherings.

That was extended on Wednesday until July 16 after restrictions failed to curtail the spread with officials frustrated after finding new infections linked to illegal gatherings and people flouting social distancing rules.

Australia has fared much better than many other developed countries in keeping COVID-19 numbers low, with just under 30,900 cases and 910 deaths, however, a slow vaccination rollout has taken the shine off some of this success.