| Health officials are pouring their effort into convincing those still hesitant to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but none of the strategies appear to be a “Hail Mary pass” to get the U.S. to reach President Joe Biden’s vaccination goal and curb spreading variants.
“I just don’t know if there’s something out there that we’re not doing that for sure will get us over the score line,” Dr. Marcus Plescia, the Chief Medical Officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told CNN. “That’s the problem — we’re doing all the things that we know can be effective, but it’s just allowing us to maintain this steady state, when what we really need to do is bump the demand back up.”
Biden set a goal earlier this year for 70% of American adults to have received at least one dose of vaccine by July 4. Although the country is getting close, with 65.4% of adults having received at least one dose, demand and vaccination rates have declined, leaving experts to worry if enough of the population will be vaccinated in time to curb fall and winter surges.
Low vaccination rates are dangerous when combined with the spread of variants like delta, which is believed to be more transmissible and cause more serious illness. Steve Edwards, CEO of CoxHealth, a health care system in Springfield, Missouri, said the combination is to blame for a six-fold increase in hospitalizations in his system.
“I think it is the delta variant and there is a lot of kindling with low vaccination rates, so it’s spreading very rapidly,” Edwards said. “Almost all of our cases are unvaccinated people that, in my opinion, have put themselves in harm’s way during this pandemic.”
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