What challenges are officials seeing with vaccination rates? Are there methods that could be implemented to reach more people?
Parker: Vaccine rates have increased as cases and hospitalizations surge due to Delta, but not enough.Vaccines are readily available and continue to work remarkably well to reduce risk of hospitalization, severe disease and death. Public health authorities and community leaders should approach the importance of vaccination with more reasoned, calm and reassuring discussions about vaccine safety and effectiveness to gain public confidence in vaccines for those who remain undecided.
A Texas A&M nursing student prepares a dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Mark Guerrero/Texas A&M Division of Marketing & Communications
The recent change in the CDC mask guidance was prudent and in line with good public health action, but the way the message was delivered caused confusion, controversy and unnecessary arguments, largely because the data underlying the mask guidance change was not made publicly available and discussed in a reasoned approach until several days later. Unfortunately, the ensuing controversy lost focus on the reassuring message about vaccine safety and effectiveness.
I encourage everyone to talk with their health care provider, family physician, or other trusted people in your community to obtain the best information available from trusted sources when trying to reach a decision to get vaccinated.
Data on COVID vaccine safety and effectiveness is reassuring compared to not being vaccinated. SARS-CoV-2 can take a life away in mysterious and sometimes unpredictable ways. COVID vaccines authorized for use in the United States remain remarkably effective against the most severe clinical outcomes from SARS-CoV-2 infection, including Delta. COVID vaccination is the best way to protect yourself, your family, and colleagues.
Finally, I think it essential that the FDA expedite their final review and grant full Biologics License Approvals for the COVID vaccines.
Hotez: I’m quite worried about the schools because there’s so much transmission now in the Southern region, and the vaccination rates among adolescents are really low. Everyone’s talking about mask mandates for schools, but I think we need to move toward vaccination mandates, and that’s going to be really important if we’re going to have a successful school year. Otherwise, we’re already seeing so many kids getting COVID as schools start to open – it’s just going to shut everything down. I think we need to reprioritize getting kids safely through the school year and in-person classes, and that’s going to mean both vaccine and mask mandates. Even though that’s not popular, I don’t see another way around it.
The anti-vaccine aggression is still pretty high. We still need to address the disinformation that still dominates the media and social media.
Has the Delta variant affected the threshold for herd immunity? Is that still the goal?
Parker: Unfortunately, I do not have a good answer for herd immunity, nor do I believe anyone has a good answer beyond predictive modeling or predictive speculation.I do not believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus is going away anytime soon. We cannot eliminate SARS-CoV-2 by human interventions, but human interventions can reduce the virus’s impact. We should anticipate that the virus will become endemic with new variants emerging beyond Delta. But that does not mean the pandemic will go on forever. The pandemic will not go on forever if we can mitigate the most severe clinical outcomes even if SARS-CoV-2 becomes endemic. Other viruses, like influenza, are endemic and we learn how to manage risk – that includes annual vaccinations.
The current COVID vaccines remain remarkably effective in reducing the risk of severe disease and death, even against the highly contagious Delta variant. More people should take advantage of this life saving measure. The United States and other high-income countries must take more action to increase global vaccine access. The WHO reports that less than 2 percent of people living in low-middle income countries are fully vaccinated.
Finally, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are conducting new clinical trials with vaccine candidates designed against new variants and are prepared to pivot manufacturing boosters against specific new variants, like we do every year for seasonal influenza. National public health authorities must likewise be prepared to make timely and decisive decisions for the pivot to be effective.
Hotez: I don’t even use the term herd immunity anymore because it’s been so twisted by people with political agendas. What I say is once vaccination coverage gets to about 75 percent among the whole population, we start to see a slowing in transmission, and that’s the goal. Based on the reproductive numbers of this virus, if we’re serious about stopping transmission, ultimately we have to get 85 percent of the population vaccinated. That’s all of the adults and adolescents. It’s a pretty high bar, but I think we could do it.
