Consider This from NPR - A 'Pandemic Of Unvaccinated People' As Delta Variant Spreads Rapidly

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

Los Angeles County — America's most populous county — recently recommended mask wearing even for vaccinated people, just two weeks after the state relaxed most COVID restrictions. County officials say masks will help protect unvaccinated people from the more transmissible delta variant, which is spreading rapidly across the country. CDC director Rochelle Walensky tells NPR the federal government may "encourage" states to return to more mitigation measures in places where vaccination is low and the delta variant is driving cases up. That describes the situation in Missouri. Rebecca Smith with member station KBIA reports from Columbia. Shalina Chatlani of the Gulf States Newsroom looks at the challenge of getting more people vaccinated in southern states.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

More than 10 million people live in L.A. County. That makes it the biggest county in the U.S. by far. Two weeks ago, California's governor said it was time for people living there and across the state to move beyond COVID restrictions. To move beyond capacity limits, to move beyond social distancing and physical distancing, and yes, move beyond wearing these masks. So that was Gavin Newsom on June 15th. This Monday... L.A. County's Public Health Department is strongly recommending everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks. The county health department issued that recommendation, which is not a requirement, but it mirrors guidance from the World Health Organization. Citing an increase of the highly contagious Delta variant of the COVID virus.

In L.A., like everywhere else in the country, the more contagious Delta variant is spreading fast. We do continue to see an increase in the Delta variants as a proportion of variants of concern. L.A. County's public health director, Barbara Ferrer, said this past week almost 60 percent of eligible people in the county are fully vaccinated and pretty well protected from the Delta variant. But there's still that other 40 percent. And the risk those people face is easy to see when you consider that of more than 12,000 COVID deaths in the county since vaccination began. 99.8 percent. That's almost 100 percent were among unvaccinated people. Meaning it's never been more urgent to get more people vaccinated.

Currently, this is a pandemic of unvaccinated people who are at increasing risk for unknowingly incubating Delta variants and other variants of concern. Consider this. For weeks, public health officials have been warning about the Delta variant. Now, America's most populous county is masking up again. And wherever you live, it's getting more and more dangerous to be unvaccinated. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Wednesday, June 30th.

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newspaper in Maryland. And now, finally, his trial has started. What we wanted to know was how did the staff who survived the shooting keep going? Find out in our Capital Gazette series from NPR's Embedded podcast. It's Consider This from NPR. The Delta variant is what's keeping public health officials up at night. About a month ago, we were seeing the Delta variant at about two to three percent. Here's CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. I spoke to her late last week. Two weeks ago, we were seeing it at about nine to ten percent. And more recently, we're seeing that the Delta variant makes up about 20 percent of virus circulating and up to 30, 40, 50 percent in some regions of the United States. That means nationwide, the portion of cases made up by Delta is doubling about every two weeks. There are places around the world, Australia and South Africa,

that have imposed new lockdowns in response to the variant, and Israel recently brought back indoor masking. Here's Dr. Maria Vankerkov with the World Health Organization. Until we know more about these variants, we are advising that people still continue to adhere to the individual-level measures that we know work. This includes mask wearing. Van Kerkhove told NPR this week the WHO still recommends masks in some situations because

scientists still aren't certain about the level of protection vaccines offer against passing on the Delta variant to someone else. We know that the vaccines work against severe disease and death, including the Delta variant to someone else. We know that the vaccines work against severe disease and death, including the Delta variant, but we don't have as much data on reducing transmission. We have good indication that it does work a gap about preventing transmission, but that's not fully understood yet. So even if you're vaccinated, she says, you may want to wear a mask. It doesn't mean that masks need to be worn everywhere all the time. It's really in areas where the virus is transmitting, the Delta variant in particular. If you're in enclosed spaces,

if you're with others who haven't had vaccination, it's contextual, it's setting specific. And I understand from a public point of view that this is confusing, but let me be very clear, we will get out of this pandemic. We will see the light at that end of the tunnel. How quickly we get there is up to us. And so the question here in the U.S. is, will more public health officials decide to recommend or require a return to mitigation measures like they did in L.A. County? CDC Director Walensky didn't rule out encouraging that for some places.

Are you guys going to be urging local leaders to put mask mandates back in place or social distancing requirements back in place? Right. So that's a really great question. We are encouraging all local areas to look at their vaccination rates, to look at the case rates and to make their policies with those both in mind. If you have low cases, then the answer there is to make sure you scale up your vaccination rate. If you also have high cases, then we might encourage states to take the mitigation strategies that we know work to decrease the number of cases and increase the vaccination rate. High case rates and low vaccination rates are exactly what public health officials are dealing with in Missouri.

Unlike many parts of the country, cases there are rising, and the state also ranks near the bottom for the total number of vaccinations. Rebecca Smith with member station KBIA reports. Amanda Hedgepeth is a vice president at Cox Health, a hospital system based in Springfield, Missouri. She says the Delta variant has moved in fast. When you look back just several weeks ago, maybe 10 percent of the isolate sequencing came back as the Delta variant. Today, 90% of those isolates are coming back as the Delta variant. The number of COVID patients in the hospital system has more than quadrupled in the last six weeks, and they're younger, people mostly in their 30s and 40s

who are unvaccinated. Hedgepeth says the area they serve has some of the highest numbers of new COVID cases in the state and some of the lowest rates of vaccination, from 17 to 33 percent. Patients that are less likely to get the vaccine tend to live in more rural areas, tend to live in more red areas or red states, those without a college education, and those that are evangelical. And when you really look at the makeup of southwest Missouri, that is a lot of our patient population. So this is the upstairs that we're using now, of course. And we have the foyer and then go into the sanctuary. At the Community of Christ Church in Branson, Mary Dan Christensen is the co-pastor.

A few months ago, her congregation returned to meeting in person. But with cases on the rise a couple of weeks ago, they reinstituted masking and social distancing, even though Christensen says much of the older congregation is already vaccinated. We always err on the side of safety. So we don't want anyone to come to church and feel like they're unsafe or it's an unhealthy environment. So if we get to that point where we just need to say, we're going to go back to only doing Zoom church services, everyone knows how to do them now. And then when the numbers go down, you know, we'll meet together. She says she had no idea the county's vaccination rate was so low. Now, Branson is a big tourist destination

in the Midwest, and many people here are happy to see visitors enjoying attractions like Lakes Taney Como and Table Rock and the Presley's Country Jubilee. Many also tell me that they don't want the vaccine and think the COVID pandemic isn't as bad as the media says, but few want to go on tape. Dr. Andrew Pekosch, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University, warns that hotspots with low vaccination rates, like southwest Missouri, create opportunities for the virus to further mutate and become even more infectious. And he adds that this current surge could be just a taste of what the fall looks like nationwide. So we're going to be bringing people together in environments where they're going to be in closer contact, where the virus is more easily spread. If we don't really make an effort to boost the vaccination rates in this country, we will be setting up for a larger surge in the fall. Vaccines are proving effective against the Delta variant, but they only work if people get the shots.

And Missouri's vaccination rate has dropped by about a third since the beginning of June. A spokesperson for the state of Missouri says it's currently exploring a variety of vaccine incentive options. That was Rebecca Smith with member station KBIA in Columbia, Missouri. You heard in that story officials from Cox Health, a health care system in southwest Missouri. Earlier this month, NPR also spoke to the company's CEO, Steve Edwards, and he wanted to emphasize one other thing about the pandemic in that region. Health care workers, he said. They're entering a new and demoralizing phase of the pandemic.

I mean, there's a cultural shift in our staff right now. There was this great sense of teamwork and working together in the winter and fall. And now because of the, they know that everyone, every single case we have in the hospital is not vaccinated. They, our staff's exasperated, exasperated by the politics,asperated by the politics, they're exasperated by Facebook, they're exasperated by the misinformation, exasperated by lies. They're frustrated because they know that while we're taking care of all these patients, we have other patients that also need care and they couldn't be prevented with a vaccine where these could. Caring for patients who couldn't or wouldn't get vaccinated is just one challenge in states with low rates of vaccination.

The other challenge, of course, increasing those rates. Shalina Chetlani of the Gulf States Newsroom recently tagged along with a volunteer trying to do that in Louisiana. On a blistering hot day, volunteer Hugo Martinez trudges through a New Orleans neighborhood equipped with red informational flyers. Hey, good evening, ma'am. My name is Hugo. I'm a volunteer with Together Louisiana. He's part of a nonprofit and community-run campaign called Together Louisiana. Martinez is knocking on doors to encourage vaccinations.

He offers a complimentary fish fry dinner to some residents. Have y'all got your shot yet? No. Do you want me to sign you up for that? No. And while many in this neighborhood have gotten the vaccine, some still don't trust it, like 45-year-old Daryl Woods. His dad died from COVID, but he says he can't be convinced.

There's too many other things out here we don't have nothing for, but we have something for this. How'd they have it so fast? While it's true it's the first time a vaccine with this mRNA technology has been authorized, scientists have been studying this for years, which sped up the process for developing the shots. Martinez tries to explain the science to people, but he still hears a lot of conspiracy theories and hesitation. I think it's a pretty scary situation. I think it's important for people to get the vaccine for that reason in order to reduce the potential mutations of this virus. Health officials are worried about that too. But Louisiana, alongside Mississippi and Alabama,

have the lowest vaccination rates in the country, at less than 40 percent. Louisiana Regional Medical Director Chantel Hebert-McGee says it's not fair to compare the region to other parts of the country. I don't want us to victim blame and say, why aren't these people getting vaccinated yet? The South is more rural, with an underfunded public health system, a lack of safety net health care providers, and cultural trust issues with the medical system. Born out of historical examples of racism in health care, she says in the South, vaccinations will have to be slow and steady. I do think they're working, but I think it takes time.

And that's the concern. The CDC has already warned the Delta variant is going to be the dominant strain in the U.S. Alabama State Health Officer Scott Harris is concerned about outbreaks that could start locally and spread nationally. If you have clusters anywhere, I mean, the whole system breaks down. But Harris isn't giving up. We actually are encouraged by the fact that we do see a way out of it. So we've just got to keep trying. One talking point, Harris says hospitalizations have been relatively flat,

but that almost all of the new severe cases are among the unvaccinated. Shalina Chutlani with the Gulf States Newsroom. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.