There's a lot to celebrate right now in terms of the COVID pandemic. As of Apr. 30, 101.4 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That's nearing almost half of the U.S.'s adult population. And though some states are the exception, COVID cases haven't been this low nationwide since Oct. 2020, as NPR reports. But a concerning trend has emerged in recent weeks: The rate at which people are getting vaccinated is slowing down. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of CDC data, the U.S. administered about 2.8 million COVID vaccines a day during the past week, down from an average of about 3.2 million per day earlier in April.
Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, PhD, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, voiced his concerns about the dwindling vaccination rate recently. On the Apr. 29 episode of his Osterholm Update podcast, the infectious disease expert said states with higher new case rates and lower vaccination rates are the ones that need to "be careful" right now.
"We're watching vaccinations drop precipitously in terms of new vaccinations. For the last four or five days, we have had more people in this country vaccinated for second dose only as opposed to the first dose, indicating that the numbers are coming down," Osterholm explained. "We've got some big holes out there yet."
"I just want us to be cautious here," Osterholm continued. "I know others will say, it's not going to surge, I'm blowing this out of proportion. But you look at the numbers yourself. And when we look at this, we see in so many instances the situation where we do have substantial gaps in vaccination. … Certainly some in the Northwest where we're seeing vaccine hesitancies, others in the South where we're seeing vaccine hesitancy. So I just raise this point right now that I think we have to be careful to assume we're done."
Specifically, Osterholm pointed out 14 states that should be on the lookout. For a better understanding of how vaccination rates vary in these states, we looked to Becker's Hospital Review, which calculated the percentage of people in each state who've been vaccinated, using the CDC's vaccine tracking data as of Apr. 30. Then, we looked at COVID Act Now's U.S. COVID Risk & Vaccine Tracker to compile new case rates on the 14 states Osterholm is worried about as of Apr. 30 as well. We've also included COVID Act Now's vulnerability level for each state—some of which match Osterholm's concern, while others do not.
Keep reading to find out which states need to be careful, according to the virus expert. (For comparison, right now, Maine has the highest percentage of people vaccinated, with 39 percent, and California has the lowest new case rate, at 4.4 per 100,000 people.) And for more on where COVID cases are climbing, These 4 States Are Seeing the Worst COVID Surges Right Now.
Read the original article on Best Life.
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May 02, 2021 at 12:42AM
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These 14 States Need to 'Be Careful' With COVID, Virus Expert Warns - msnNOW
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