SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Unlike the U.S., the UK tried to get everybody one dose of the COVID vaccine and delayed the second dose for 3 months.
Now with the Delta variant first discovered in India becoming dominant there, they are playing catchup.
“We have an awful lot of people in the UK with just one jab, one shot of immunization, so they are more susceptible to the variant,” said UC Berkeley infections disease specialist Dr. John Swartzberg.
Medical experts say both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine have proven to be effective against the Delta variant and with vaccination rates high in the Bay Area, that puts this area in a better position should the Felta variant take off here.
“I don’t have a lot of concern about it impacting the Bay Area adversely, there are parts of California it might impact.. But for the United States there is a lot of under immunizations especially in the south and that is an area of concern,” UCSF epidemiology professor Dr. George Rutherford said.
That’s why infectious disease specialists say there must be a greater push to get more people vaccinated.
“We have the tools we just have to have them applied as broadly as possible.”
If that doesn’t happen, the Delta variant does take hold in the U.S. that so-called return to normal could happen later than sooner.
So instead of by this time next year COVID is not an issue like flu, it could be a prominent thing to deal with in our day-to-day living and that’s going to be the difference.
Right now the Delta virus accounts for more than 6% of all sequences of COVID cases here in the U.S. in San Francisco.