Increasing COVID Cases in US Young Test Vaccine Strategy

The United States has spent months vaccination against the most risky and serious illnesses, from COVID-19 to healthcare providers and the elderly, to essential workers and people with other underlying illnesses. It was.

In the coming weeks, COVID hospitalization and mortality data will show if the strategy is working.

The surge in the number of cases usually led to an increase in hospitalizations and deaths after a few weeks. This is the dynamic that the most vulnerable people should weaken after being vaccinated. There are early signs that are happening in places like nursing homes, but it’s still unclear if that also applies to other endangered groups and young people. And just as infections are rising again in many states, the moment of truth is upon us.

Josh Mishaw, Associate Director of Global Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent non-profit organization, said: All states are eligible for at least 65 years of age. In other words, “80% of the population is cutting out the ones with the highest risk of death.”

An increase in the proportion of Americans vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine (about 26%, or more than 87 million) received at least one dose is an inflection point in the pandemic trajectory and the virus is present. It represents the moment of the watershed in the United States. At least 30 million people became ill and more than 547,000 died.

Still, most people in the United States are still unprotected. There are also major obstacles to US competition to stay ahead of the virus, including vaccine hesitation, access barriers, reduced testing, and the emergence of more contagious variants.

While the number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths continues to be an important indicator of pandemic status, according to public health experts, there is a clear need for a more accurate way to measure COVID-19.

Ali Mokudad, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, who produces the influential COVID-19 forecast, said: “Otherwise we are flying blindly.”

At least in some groups, COVID vaccines have reached their target audience and are doing what they are supposed to do. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 71% of people over the age of 65, the initial demographics for vaccination, receive at least one vaccination.

According to CDC data, in nursing homes where residents also prioritized early firing, COVID cases among residents decreased by nearly 98% and deaths decreased by 88% from mid-December.

This means that new COVID cases are more likely to appear in the younger age group. This happened in Israel. In Israel, infections have recently peaked, despite the world’s leading vaccination program. Despite the reduction in infections in the population over the age of 50, cases have been found to surge among adolescents.

Young people are thought to be less symptomatic, but they can still spread the virus and get serious cases on their own. For example, in some states, states with underlying illness are not yet eligible for firing.

“The declining mortality rate for vaccinated people is very good news, but the mortality rate for people over the age of 20 is still high,” CDC director Rochelle Warrensky said in a briefing at the White House this week. There is. ” “These cases continue to grow in their demographics, so we can see mortality in those demographics as well.”

These risks are paramount in West Virginia and have expanded their eligibility this week to stop the spread of the virus among young people.

Clay Marsh, COVID-19 Coordinator and Executive Dean of Health Sciences at West Virginia University, said: “We want to keep the variants away and let the rest of us get vaccinated.”

In Michigan, where COVID infections are on the rise again, hospitalization and case rates are significantly lower than in October, when the state last saw a surge of this magnitude. Approximately 69% of cohorts aged 65 and over (usually half of all COVID hospitalizations and 4 in 5 deaths) are currently vaccinated at least once.

Nonetheless, the Michigan Health Hospital Association warned this week that hospitalizations for younger age groups are skyrocketing. Since early March, they have risen 633% in their 30s and 800% in their 40s. The data show that the COVID-19 vaccine is working, but also states that “adults of all ages are vulnerable to complications from the disease.”

Expanding vaccination coverage is the key to US recovery, but it also threatens to further disrupt the already collapsed national pandemic response.

For example, consider a test level, which is a way to identify and count cases in the United States. These levels have been stagnant in recent months and have begun to decline even recently.

Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Health Security Center, said: Insight into where the virus is, where it is not, and how quickly it spreads. “

There are other ways to monitor COVID trends, called surveillance, such as more targeted inspections in places that never get off the ground in the United States, such as travel hubs, nursing homes, and prisons.

This is important because as the scope of vaccination increases, the outbreak of the virus is likely to be more dispersed.

David Rubin, MD, Physician and Director of Policy Lab at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, who models the COVID-19 epidemic, said:

In an interview, CDC epidemiologist Adam MacNeil has set up a surveillance system to track cases of COVID-19 reinfection and cases of infection in vaccinated people, and has years to track and model infection levels. He said it would accompany the effort.

Federal and state authorities have released county-level virus data, but often lack more accurate investigations of who is affected, IHME’s Mokudad and others said. According to PolicyLab’s Rubin, for example, age group, race, and ethnic case and hospitalization data are rarely available at the county level and are inconsistent.

“A year after the pandemic, we don’t even have it,” he said.

“Forward

Next ”