Delta Variant Spreads As Texas Lags In Vaccinations

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, TX — The delta variant has become dominant in coronavirus cases across the United States, accounting for more than half of cases nationwide in the week that ended on July 3, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A number of clusters have been reported in states that are lagging on vaccinations, while vaccine numbers in Texas and Montgomery County are behind the national average.

Health experts have said that although the risk of getting sick from the delta variant is low for those who have been fully vaccinated, its spread could delay the end of the pandemic.

“Delta will certainly accelerate the pandemic” around the world, F. Perry Wilson, a Yale Medicine epidemiologist, said in a statement.

The delta variant, which was first seen in India and was first detected in the United States in March, spreads 50 percent faster than the alpha variant that originated in Great Britain, which itself spreads 50 percent faster than the original coronavirus strain, according to Yale Medicine.

It accounted for 21.6 percent of coronavirus cases in Texas over a four-week period ending on June 19, CDC numbers show. Just over half of the national coronavirus cases during a two-week period ending July 3 involved the delta variant, Reuters reported.

Andy Slavitt, a former member of President Joe Biden’s Covid Response Team, told CNN the delta variant is “the 2020 version of COVID-19 on steroids.”

“It’s twice as infectious,” Slavitt said. “Fortunately, unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the delta variant in its tracks: It’s called vaccine.”

That’s evidenced in North Carolina, among other states, where the state’s health secretary said more than 99 percent of the new cases there have occurred in people who are not fully vaccinated, according to WITN.

As of July 8, 24 states were looking at a coronavirus case weekly uptick of 10 percent or more, Johns Hopkins University data shows.

States within regions showing a high cluster of delta variant cases are among those lagging in vaccination rates, WBUR and others have reported. In the region including Texas, the delta variant accounted for 58.9 percent of recent cases, a map from Fortune.com shows.

In Montgomery County, 46.4 percent of people age 12 and up — those eligible to get a vaccine — have been fully vaccinated, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. That's over nine percentage points lower than the 55.6 percent national vaccine rate as of July 8. In Texas, 50.4 percent of eligible residents have been fully vaccinated.