Fresno’s unvaccinated are ‘sitting ducks’ amid Delta variant increase, health officer warns
The number of new COVID-19 cases springing up in recent months in Fresno and across the central San Joaquin Valley is a far cry from the peak of the pandemic in December and January.
Yet the Delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected last winter in India, is on the rise in the Valley and across California, and doctors say it poses a danger to the more than 1 million residents in Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19.
“Delta variant cases are rising, particularly among the unvaccinated,” said Dr. John Zweiffler, a public health physician with the Fresno County Department of Public Health. “Fortunately, the number of hospitalizations and deaths have not increased as much, but 98-99% have been among the unvaccinated.”
The three vaccines available in the U.S. are showing to be effective at preventing infection for people who are exposed to COVID-19, and at minimizing the risk of serious illness or hospitalization from the Delta variant, said Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer.
“The facts are becoming more and more clear that we are basically selecting ourselves into two different risk pools – those of us who have had our vaccine, and those of us who are yet unvaccinated,” Vohra said in a recent conference call with reporters. “And the folks who are unvaccinated are sitting ducks.”
As of Friday, health officials in the four-county region reported at least 70 confirmed cases of the Delta variant, including 30 in Fresno County. That’s not a lot among almost 193,000 COVID-19 cases that have occurred in the Valley since the first infections in March 2020. But in the Valley’s two most populous counties, Fresno and Tulare, Delta cases have tripled in the past two weeks.
That’s worrisome to public health officials because the variant is proving to be more contagious among the population – and, doctors say, more severe among people who catch it. That’s compounded by vaccination rates in the Valley that are considerably lower than California as a whole.
Statewide, almost 50% of the overall population has been fully vaccinated – meaning they’ve received two shots of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson product.
By contrast, of California’s 58 counties, none of the Valley counties has a fully-vaccinated rate above 40%. Fresno leads the region with a rate of 39.5%. Neighboring Kings County has the second-lowest rate in the state, at 27.4%.
“It’s just a tremendous risk, and it’s no longer necessary now that vaccines are so available,” Vohra said, adding that the vaccines are not only free of charge, but “easier to access now than ever.”
Vohra pointed to the number of people who are still getting hospitalized for coronavirus infections, a figure that’s also been on the rise in recent days, most of whom are unvaccinated.
On Friday, Vohra restated his explanation that vaccines “prevent you from catching COVID to begin with, and even if you catch COVID, they prevent you from going to the hospital, which was the really big win here.”
“What’s heartening to see is that even when people get COVID after they get fully vaccinated, it’s very mild,” he said. “Your whole body doesn’t shut down and develop pneumonia or multi-organ failure…Or they’re completely asymptomatic.”
The same kind of vaccine protection is afforded against the Delta variant, Vohra added.
Like other variant strains of coronavirus, the Delta variant represents a mutation from previous forms of COVID-19 during the pandemic. As more people are vaccinated, Vohra said, there are fewer opportunities for the virus to change as it replicates and spreads from person to person.
“The great irony is that a lot of those (unvaccinated) individuals don’t believe COVID exists or whatever,” he added. “And guess what: They’re the ones who are going to prolong this pandemic.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2021 at 3:10 PM.
