CDC Says Vaccine Efficacy Drops After Months, New Delta Strain More Transmissible

Cases of a newer strain of COVID-19 are on the rise in California and throughout the United States, raising worry. Around the middle of June, the Delta variant, which originated in India, started spreading more quickly and made headlines.

COVID-19 Delta Variant still remains more transmissible. (Photo: AARP)

CDC Reports About the Efficacy of COVID-19 Vaccine

In a recently published article in The New York Times, according to a study published by the CDC on August 27, the protection provided by mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) against the Delta strain of Covid-19 may decrease to just 66 percent effective after six months. A date that will be reached soon for the 53.4 million Americans who will have been vaccinated by March 30, 2021.

The CDC states that 11,050 breakthrough COVID-19 infections have resulted in hospitalization or death among the 171 million Americans who have been completely vaccinated as of August 23, 2021. That is not the total number of breakthrough infections; the CDC ceased monitoring all breakthrough cases in May, concentrating solely on those that result in hospitalization or death, a decision that has been criticized by many authorities as obscuring the vaccinations’ efficacy.

Moreover, States are now attempting to maintain their own records of breakthrough cases, and the high numbers recorded since Delta’s dominance suggest that the CDC figures may be incorrect, according to a report published in The Wall Street Journal.

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For example, Massachusetts news station WWLP reported only two days earlier that there had been 15,739 Covid-19 breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated Massachusetts people so far, with 3,098 recorded in just one week.
When compared to the “official” figure on the CDC website, that astounding amount has raised many questions.

Delta Variant Still a Threat for Vaccinated People

The World Health Organization has called the Delta variant “the quickest and fittest” of all coronavirus strains thus far. The Delta variety first appeared in India in December 2020 and quickly spread across the world, infecting 98 nations in a couple of months and becoming the dominant strain in at least a dozen countries.

According to the Zoe Covid Study, a comprehensive, interactive database in the UK that encourages individuals to record their COVID-19 symptoms, the cough has dropped to the fifth most frequent symptom for the unvaccinated and the eighth-most common symptom for the fully vaccinated.

The Delta variant may be much more harmful in populations with lower vaccination rates, especially in rural regions with limited access to treatment. This is already happening in poorer nations where the COVID-19 vaccination isn’t as widely available. According to health experts, the effects may last for decades.

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