COVID-19 mRNA drugs unable to stop 4-month high case rate.
QUICK FACTS:
- Hong Kong reported 5,020 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday and three new deaths, as daily infections in the region continue to rise, Reuters reports.
- The rise in COVID cases comes despite the Chinese city enforcing some of the “toughest COVID restrictions in the world.”
- The record-breaking rise also comes despite Hong Kong boasting a 90.5% vaccination rate, 87.1% of its population being “fully” vaccinated.
- China’s population has received the most vaccines in the world, and the country ranks seventh in the world for highest population percentage being fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins.
CASES EXPECTED TO GO EVEN HIGHER DESPITE INCREASING VACCINATION RATES:
- Dr. Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Centre for Health Protection’s communicable diseases branch, warned that COVID infections were expected to keep rising, The South China Morning Post notes.
- “It has not peaked yet. University of Hong Kong researchers have put the latest effective reproductive rate of the virus at 1.28,” Dr. Shuk-kwan said, referring to the estimated number of people each infected patient could pass the pathogen onto.
BACKGROUND:
- Last month, American Faith reported how New Zealand suffered a “record level” of COVID deaths despite the country’s population being 84% vaccinated.
- We also reported how coronavirus deaths were “rising fast” in Los Angeles despite 81% of the city’s population being fully vaccinated. The city’s COVID hospitalizations were also up.
- We reported how the CDC designated more than a third of U.S. counties as being in the COVID “red” zone, meaning there are high levels of community transmission and hospitalization in those areas, despite 79.1% of the U.S. population being vaccinated, 67.6% fully.
- We reported how Ghana, on the other hand, has a very low vaccination rate and enjoys a very low COVID infection rate.
