As Orange County prepares to implement an indoor mask mandate, and COVID-19 cases surge due to the more contagious delta variant, infectious disease experts continue to urge people to get vaccinated.
Dr. David Wohl is a professor of medicine and top infectious disease expert at UNC. He said people who have been fully vaccinated, regardless of which vaccine they received, are not being admitted to the hospital.
“By and large, the vast majority of people who are getting sick enough to require intensive unit care are unvaccinated people,” Wohl said.
Nationwide, the number of people now hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased by 40 percent since the beginning of August. Across UNC Health, hospitals are currently treating about 250 COVID patients. That’s up five-fold from late June when the healthcare system saw a low of about 50 COVID patients.
Wohl said while fully vaccinated people may still contract COVID-19, their symptoms are more “cold-like.” He said while the vaccines do not act as a “force field” to keep the virus out of the body, they do set the immune system up for success to react and eliminate the virus much faster.
“What the vaccines are really are doing, if you think about it, is they’re preventing the virus from getting into the lungs,” Wohl said. “They’re preventing the virus from causing pneumonia. So, we can see what we call an upper respiratory tract infection temporarily. People may notice it. People may not notice it, but then it doesn’t progress beyond that. And that’s really the saving grace. That’s why the vaccines are making such a tremendous difference. If we didn’t have the vaccines, we would be back into a surge like we saw in January, but probably worse.”
As opposed to the earlier versions of COVID-19, the delta variant produces a higher viral load in people’s noses and throats with longer periods of shedding, making it much more infectious. Wohl said one infected person could transmit the virus to anywhere from four to eight other people.
“A lot of people are infectious even before they develop symptoms,” Wohl said. “So, you unwittingly can infect other people. There’s also just a interpersonal – a community concern – if you don’t get vaccinated, beyond the potential risk to your personal health.”
During the July 4-17 period, only one county in North Carolina was listed as red in the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, indicating “critical” of “high” virus impact and community transmission. Now, less than one month later, 90 out of the state’s 100 counties are red – including Orange County.
Wohl said if you have COVID right now, there’s more than a 95 percent chance that it’s the delta variant.
Amid increasing spread, COVID-19 vaccination efforts are still ongoing, albeit hitting a bit of a standstill. In Orange County, 76 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, as compared to the state where only 47 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.
“In a perfect world, we would all be vaccinated,” Wohl said. “And if we were all vaccinated, it wouldn’t matter because even if we were ping-ponging delta variant between each other, we either wouldn’t get sick, or we would get mildly sick, and it’d be a nuisance. Instead, we’re still dealing with a pandemic where some proportion of people who acquire this, who are not vaccinated, may end up really, really ill.”
Wohl said being vaccinated for COVID-19 is akin to being vaccinated for the flu in terms of preparing your body to fight off an infection – and just like the flu shot is updated each year for changing influenza strains, so may the COVID-19 vaccine.
Right now, researchers are studying when booster shots might be needed based on the level of COVID-19 antibodies in blood over time and the number of serious breakthrough infections seen in vaccinated individuals.
While antibodies are beginning to wane in some vaccinated people, Wohl said current immune responses are still looking “pretty good,” even months after a dose.
To mitigate virus spread, the Orange County government announced a new, indoor mask mandate that will go into effect Wednesday, August 11 at 5 p.m. The mandate will apply to anyone 2 years and older, regardless of vaccination status.
Lead photo via Travis Long / News & Observer.
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I’d like some clarification of the seeming contradiction in the first few paragraphs.
Quote:
“people who have been fully vaccinated, regardless of which vaccine they received, are not being admitted to the hospital”
This implies fully vaccinated people aren’t being admitted to the hospital/ICU, zero…
Quote:
“By and large, the vast majority of people who are getting sick enough to require intensive unit care are unvaccinated people,”
So most people getting sick and being admitted to ICU are unvaccinated people, but not all, judging by the word grouping used in the article.
Can someone clarify this for us? What are the numbers of vaccinated people ending up in the hospital/ICU? If it isn’t zero, then the article is very misleading.
Thanks for the response!
No longer allowing public comments?