COVID-19 July Column
A-Many believe that the pandemic may have created a bust in the pediatric community with hundreds of thousands of American Lives lost and a deep drop in the births rate around a nation which is looking for itself. Some even think that it may have triggered a significant drop in the official birth number. The birth rate had been declining about 2% a year in the past years as reported by a statistician at the CDC to drop to a 4% with the start of the pandemic. It looks like there is a greater decline during the second half of the year 2020… maybe even 6% impacting the rate. Births have declined for whites, blacks and Hispanics in almost half of the states during this period. Birth rate has also shown a decline in the industrial world.
B- Vaccinated individuals who received a COVID-19 vaccine and become infected with the Coronavirus tend to have a lower viral load following a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This means that they are likely less infectious and do not transmit the virus to others. A fully or partly vaccinated participants in the study has shown a 40% lower viral load than the unvaccinated participants, they have also lower risks of fever symptoms. None of the vaccinated people who contacted COVID-19 were hospitalized. So, the researchers calculated that the vaccines were 91% effective at preventing infections and a little less like 81% among the partially vaccinated people.
They noticed that 10 of the 16 cases found in the fully vaccinated individuals were involving three variants especially the “Epsilon” variant identified in California. Unfortunately, the Delta variant identified in India did not arrive in the states at this particular time of the study. In conclusion, the vaccines were highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection. Parallelly, in Maryland, recently in June 2021, again, it was reported that most of the death reported due to COVID-19 were directly related to the unvaccinated victims due to the Delta variant. There are a lot of concern. Most of th individuals who become hospitalized are among the unvaccinated and millions remain unwilling to take the vaccine and remain unprotected.
The United States continues to lead the world in number of cases. The public schools in California have opted to continue to wear the masks indoors among people vaccinated or not but the CDC continues to prone that the students ot the teachers may not wear the masks if fully vaccinated. In Los Angeles, the county reported that the Delta variant was responsible for about half of the cases while more than 60% of the residents were fully vaccinated. This strain of Delta variant is spreading among a highly unvaccinated population of San Francisco, deprived of natural immunity. It has been reported by Johnson and Johnson that their vaccines will provide at least eight months of immunity to the virus. The same is seen with the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine where more protection was noted among individuals with receiving one or two doses.
C- Recently 57 young adults vaccinated, attended a camp in Galveston Texas and many were later texted positive for the virus. The Delta variant itself appears to be responsible and this may have sensibilized a certain portion of the population to encourage them to take the vaccine. Almost half o the US population is considered fully vaccinated following the program facilitating 1 million of dosed per day.
Some 42,000 local pharmacies will stock the vaccines while pediatricians and family practice physicians will assure that kids under the age of as well as pediatricians will assure that the distribution can be possible for the 12 to 18-year-old. during their school or sport activities. Nationwide, the numbers of cases have remained steady at 12,000 a day and even in the state of New York less than 300 cases a day are observed. The virus appears to be in a phase where it is not controlling our life anymore.
D- The Airports have seen an increase in the number of air travelers. There are more than 184 million cases and more than 3.98 million deaths worldwide. In the United States, there are around 34 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 605,580 deaths.as reported by John Hopkins University. Although Fauci states that the cases in the USA are mainly due to the fact that people are unvaccinated.
Maxime Coles MD
7-11-21