COVID Cases Rise in Parts of U.S. With High Vax Rates

Areas with populations more than three-quarters vaccinated.

QUICK FACTS:

• Puerto Rico and Northern New England states are coping with elevated COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, The Wall Street Journal reports.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now categorizes most counties in Vermont as well as a growing number in Maine and southern New England as “high” carriers of the virus.
• Puerto Rico recently suffered the highest rate of newly reported Covid-19 cases in the U.S., along with increasing hospitalizations.
• State data recently showed 205 hospitalized Covid-19 patients in Maine, more than double the number in mid-April.
• In Puerto Rico, known COVID cases as of Saturday reached 950 per 100,000, higher than any state. Hospitalizations in the territory recently climbed to 281 people, the highest since early February.
• Maine is 79.9% vaccinated.
• Vermont has 81% of its population fully vaccinated.
• About 83% of Puerto Rico’s population is fully vaccinated, higher than any state.
• Populations having high vaccination rates and high COVID-19 infection rates raises questions about the vaccine’s efficacy.

Northern New England and Puerto Rico, which have dodged the worst effects of the pandemic better than most states to date, are now under pressure from the latest Covid-19 variants https://t.co/gQgJgYGbRH

— WSJ Politics (@WSJPolitics) May 9, 2022

WHAT DOCTORS IN HIGHLY VACCINATED STATES ARE SAYING:

• “This is starting to affect our ability to care for individuals outside of COVID,” said James Jarvis, senior physician executive of incident command at Northern Light Health, a system in Maine with 10 hospitals. Jarvis explained that when beds fill up at bigger facilities, it makes it harder to take in transfers from the large, rural region the system covers.

BACKGROUND:

• 78.4% of Americans have been vaccinated against coronavirus, according to CDC data collected by Google. 66.8% are considered “fully” vaccinated.
• Despite having such a high vaccination rate, the U.S. is nearing 1 million coronavirus-linked deaths.
• Johns Hopkins University data show the national seven-day moving average for new coronavirus cases recently hit 73,000, up from roughly 27,000 a month earlier. The average number of hospitalized patients with confirmed Covid-19 nationally stands at about 14,500, which is up 44% from a mid-April low.