There are so many people in the US who haven’t received even their first shot of Covid vaccination, and there are many places in the US with low vaccination rates, which poses a risk for everyone.
According to an infectious disease expert, unvaccinated people are similar to “variant factories” as the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, on Friday said, “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,”
The professor explained, “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply… When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”
An unvaccinated person provides a suitable environment for the coronavirus to successfully mutate quickly and easily, and infect the host badly.
Andrew Pekosz, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told, “As mutations come up in viruses, the ones that persist are the ones that make it easier for the virus to spread in the population. Every time the viruses changes, that gives the virus a different platform to add more mutations. Now we have viruses that spread more efficiently.”
As noted by WHO, “The more we allow the virus to spread, the more opportunity the virus has to change,” and the unvaccinated people are causing the spread to happen. Hence it becomes extremely important for people to get vaccinated as it not only decreases the risk of getting infected, but also decrease the number of hospitalizations related to COVID-19.
Besides, low vaccination rates and the even more dangerous and fatal Delta variant of coronavirus are holding USA back from reaching herd immunity. President Joe Biden’s aim to have 70% of the population receive at least one shot by 4th of July has fallen behind.
Dr. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary at the US Department of Health and Human Services told, “We don’t exactly know what the herd immunity percentage would be for Covid-19. It would be different for the Delta variant, and higher, because it is more transmissible.” She added, “But we know… that people who are vaccinated are protected against this Delta variant. And they’re extremely unlikely to get sick and it’s virtually impossible for them to require hospitalizations,”