At a White House briefing on July 5th, Dr. Rochelle Walensky Head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Anthony Fauci Head of the NIH-Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) commented on the need to increase the rate and extent of COVID vaccination in the U.S.  The emergence of the Delta variant that is apparently more transmissible by a factor of three and possibly has greater pathogenicity than the Alpha variant is a cause for concern. The Delta variant now represents almost 50 percent of incident cases in recent weeks.  Despite the fact that 65.5 percent of the U.S. elderly population has received at least one dose of vaccine, protection rates vary among states and counties with Vermont at over 80 percent but less than half the adults in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Wyoming have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Recent data confirmed that over 95 percent of those requiring treatment in intensive care and 99 percent of those dying of COVID were not previously vaccinated.

Misinformation posted on the internet is reinforcing vaccine hesitancy and some politicians are using vaccination as an issue to generate publicity and to attract campaign funding.  In the face of low vaccination rates, public health authorities are adopting abnormal measures including door-to-door canvassing, making use of sports and entertainment personalities and civic leaders to promote vaccination and encouraging local family physicians to influence their patients to be protected.

If the FDA upgrades emergency use authorization to approved status, it is presumed that some vaccine hesitancy will dissipate.  Unvaccinated individuals are at risk of contracting the Delta variant of COVID, transmitting infection to their families and co-workers and also serving as potential sources of novel variants.

Those in politics and the media who have mischievously changed COVID vaccination from a public health challenge into a “freedom issue” bear the responsibility for unnecessary hospitalizations and mortality and prolonging the pandemic and its severity in the U.S.  The quicker we reduce the incidence rate the quicker we can return to a pre-COVID way of life and restore our economy.