“In the first big test of Covid-19 vaccines during a Covid-19 surge, places with higher vaccination rates are dodging the worst outcomes so far, while cases and hospitalizations surge in less-vaccinated areas,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “There are more tests yet to come, including when cold weather forces people in the well-vaccinated Northeast back indoors. But as the highly contagious Delta strain tears through the country, the trends thus far suggest vaccines can turn Covid-19 into a less dangerous, more manageable disease.”
The situation is particularly dire in the South, which has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S. and has seen smaller hospitals overrun with patients. In the Southeast, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients jumped 50% to a daily average of 17,600 over the last week from 11,600 the previous week, the CDC says. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky represent 41% of the nation’s new hospitalizations, the CDC says, twice their overall share of the population. Alabama and Mississippi have the lowest vaccination rates in the country: less than 35% of residents are fully inoculated, according to the Mayo Clinic. Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas are all in the lowest 15 states. Alabama saw more than 65,000 doses wasted because health providers couldn’t find people to take them before they expired, according to State Health Officer Scott Harris. That represents less than 1.5% of the more than 5 million coronavirus vaccines doses that Alabama has received. “Sixty-five thousand doses have been wasted. That’s extremely unfortunate when we have such a low vaccination rate and of course, there are so many people in the world that still don’t have access to vaccine,” Harris said. Florida has been especially hard hit. It makes up more than 20% of the nation’s new cases and hospitalizations, triple its share of the population. Many rural counties have vaccination rates below 40%, with the state at 49%. The state again set a record Saturday, reporting 23,903 new cases. Gov. Ron DeSantis, while encouraging vaccinations, has taken a hard line against mask rules and other restrictions. Running for reelection next year and eyeing a 2024 Republican presidential bid, he and President Joe Biden have verbally sparred in recent days. DeSantis has accused the Democratic president of overreach, while Biden has said DeSantis should “get out of the way” of local officials if he doesn’t want to fight the outbreak. Some people have been scared off from the vaccine by bogus warnings on social media and from some non-medical media personalities. Miami-area real estate agent Yoiris Duran, 56, said her family was swayed by the misinformation, although doctors and public health officials have almost universally encouraged people to get vaccinated. After she, her husband and 25-year-old son got seriously ill with COVID-19 and were hospitalized, she’s now encouraging friends and family to get vaccinated. “I don’t want people to go through what we have gone through,” she said in a video interview with Baptist Health Systems. In some parts of the U.S., hospitals are scrambling to find beds for patients. Dr. Leonardo Alonso, who works in several emergency rooms in Jacksonville, one of Florida’s hardest-hit areas, said some hospitals are sending some COVID-19 patients home with oxygen and a monitor to free beds for sicker people. “The ICUs, the hospitals are all on a near what we call mass casualty incident. They’re almost at protocols where they’re overflowing,” Alonso said. In Texas, Houston officials said some patients were transferred out of the city — one as far as North Dakota. Dr. David Persse, Houston’s chief medical officer, said some ambulances were waiting hours to offload patients because no beds were available. Persse said he feared this would lead to prolonged response times to 911 medical calls. “The health care system right now is nearly at a breaking point. ... For the next three weeks or so, I see no relief on what’s happening in emergency departments,” Persse said Thursday. https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-b0811d7287ef240ae619ba1e385e0a63