New ‘Delta Plus’ COVID variant outbreak in San Fran’s Bay Area as U.S. sees 100K cases a day – an 800% rise since June
DELTA-plus Covid variant cases are surging in San Francisco Bay - as US infections spiral by 800 per cent to reach a staggering 100,000 a DAY, new stats show.
The eruption has prompted hundreds of worried Americans to get a third Covid jab, with some even using fake names to bolster protection, says a report.
The US was averaging about 11,000 cases a day in late June. Now the number is 107,143, reports the Associated Press.
It took America about nine months to cross the 100,000 average case number in November before peaking at about 250,000 in early January.
Cases bottomed out in June, but took about six weeks to go back above 100,000.
This spike is despite more than 70 per cent of the adult population receiving at least one dose of a .
The seven-day average for daily new deaths also increased, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
It rose over the past two weeks from about 270 deaths per day to nearly 500 a day as of Friday.
The virus is spreading quickly through unvaccinated populations, especially in the South where hospitals have been overrun with patients.
Health officials are fearful that cases will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the jabs.
If we don’t vaccinate people, we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky
Top health officials have dubbed it a “pandemic of the unvaccinated".
“Our models show that if we don’t (vaccinate people), we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day.
"[This is] similar to our surge in early January,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky warned CNN this week.
The US has now managed to fully vaccinate just 50 per cent of its population, despite a continued push for more to get their jabs.
The national rise in coronavirus infections comes as health experts in monitor the spread of the new Delta-plus variant.
The Santa Clara County Public Health Department has so far detected 46 cases of this particular mutation.
Whether it is more dangerous than previous variants is not yet clear.
“We believe that it’s at least as bad as Delta,” said Dr Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California in San Francisco.
reported him adding: “We don’t know if it’s even worse than Delta yet.
"When I say worse we think about number one: is it more transmissible? Number two, does it evade vaccines? And, number three, does it make you sicker?”
We might even run out of the Greek alphabet!
Dr Peter Chin-Hong
Santa Clara County told KPIX that the county "is currently tracking the Delta variant, and the 'Delta-plus' variants on our dashboard.
"Cases of Delta-plus exist statewide and nationwide and there is currently not enough information on these particular variants to indicate whether they may be more concerning than the original Delta variant.”
Dr Chin-Hong warned: “Delta-plus is not the end of the story.
"Until more of us get vaccinated we’re going to have these reports of weird other Greek letters and combinations of Greek letters - we might even run out of the Greek alphabet!
“It sounds like a broken record, but we’re going to see these things pop up until more of us are vaccinated to kick them out of our communities.”
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