Countries around the world are ramping up the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to halt the spread of the virus but the coronavirus itself has mutated into different forms, the latest of which is the delta virus. First isolated in India, it that has now spread from North America to Australia as it is a highly transmissible variant.
At a July 12 World Health Organization (WHO) briefing, chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that there were reports coming in that there were cases of COVID-19 among vaccinated people. They were mainly infected with the delta variant. She added that it was an issue not to be worried about as vaccinated individuals had one common denominator. They were either asymptomatic or had mild cases.
She also confirmed that vaccination reduces a person’s chances of getting hospitalized and dying as a result of the infection. So, unvaccinated people have higher chances of getting severe cases of infection due to the delta variant, which might lead to hospitalizations and death.
Earlier, during a White House briefing on July 8, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that they knew that the authorized vaccinations used in the nation could prevent severe disease, hospitalizations and death from the delta variant. She said that such results were seen not only in the U.S. but around the world.
Dr. Walensky also mentioned that 99.5 percent of the deaths in the nations were those of unvaccinated people and their deaths could have been prevented with a simple, safe shot. She added that vaccination was their leading public health strategy to stop the delta variant and to decrease the number of infections in all states across the nation.
Dr. Swaminathan said that vaccinated people who got COVID-19 could spread the infection and that was the reason why the WHO still recommended masks and social distancing, but the CDC has differed from the organization in this aspect.
The CDC had said that fully vaccinated people need not wear masks and maintain social distancing except when there were crowds outdoors and indoors or while using public transportation. The CDC said that recent studies showed that vaccinated people had lower viral loads and that translated to lower transmissibility of COVID-19.
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