Dr. Melanie Swift: COVID-19 vaccine urgency as delta variant continues to spread

We really need to take advantage
of this time right now

when we have the vaccines,

they are freely available
for everyone to get vaccinated

so that we can stop the spread
of the Delta variant

but also we can prevent
the development of new variants.

The situation with the Delta variant
can't really be understated at this point.

We are really at a pivotal moment

in the pandemic right now.

We were on the down trend
in the United States

with increasing vaccination rates
and decreasing new cases,

and what has happened is that

we've gone from having our first case

of the Delta variant
in the United States in March

to it now being the vast majority
of our sequenced cases.

The Delta variant which was first seen
in December in India

is more contagious
than the previous strains

that we've had in the United States,

but it's also causing more severe illness,

so that is causing
hospitalizations to increase

icu admissions to increase,

and we're looking at another wave
of the pandemic.

So it's more contagious,
and that's concerning;

it's more serious, and that's concerning.

The messenger rna vaccines
are highly effective against this variant,

so we have that information
from clinical studies

as well as from laboratory tests

of what we think
the immune response should be.

And so they're showing
clinically, in the UK,

where the Delta variant
has been taking hold for many months now

that those mRNA vaccines are still highly effective

so over 80 percent for infection and

90 or so for severe disease

so it's still very important to take

those vaccines

the johnson and johnson vaccine is

probably also going to be very effective

there are some early studies looking at

the laboratory measurement

of our immune system response that are

very promising and show really good

response

to the Delta variant but we don't yet

have large numbers of people in clinical

studies

to see what the impact of the johnson

johnson vaccine is on the Delta variant

just yet

but we're very hopeful that that's going

to be positive as well

we want everyone who is able to get

vaccinated to get vaccinated

you know we've sort of stalled out in

the United States with our vaccination

rates

and nationally only half of the

population

has been fully documented a little less

than half

and there are some states that are doing

better and some states that are lagging

behind

and we're seeing that those states that

have lower vaccination rates

is where the Delta variant is spreading

the most

people have often been waiting to see

how people respond to the vaccines and

what kind of side effects happen

if people have been waiting to see now's

your chance to go ahead and get

vaccinated because you've

we've seen that people do very very well

side effects are mild they're

self-limited these vaccines are

incredibly

safe now is the time for people to get

vaccinated

that's really the only way that we're

going to stave

off what could be a really devastating

next wave

of this pandemic there have been a

couple of more serious adverse events

that were so rare

that they didn't occur in those large

clinical trials of more than 40

000 people so when we're talking about

things that are so rare

it's a few in a million you can't detect

those

even in very large clinical trials so

what we

have done is we have these really robust

surveillance systems to detect more rare

problems

and we have detected a few of those now

the first one was the bleeding and

clotting problem

that was associated with the johnson

johnson

vaccine which is also seen with other

vaccines in that same platform the

astrozenica vaccine

and that primarily affects women under

50. and it's still incredibly rare

and it is still safe for women to take

either kind of vaccine the second

condition that we found through this

vaccine surveillance system

is myocarditis which is associated with

the

mRNA vaccines in predominantly

males and it appears to be more common

in younger males

but adults including older adults have

also experienced it

and myocarditis is an inflammation of

the heart

and it's really rare people don't often

talk about it or know about

it but it actually is a complication of

covet infection

it's also a complication of other viral

infections

and when people have this they often

don't know the cause of it

but unlike those clotting and bleeding

disorder

that was found in women associated with

the johnson johnson vaccine

this is a condition that's pretty

straightforward to identify

standard treatment is conservative care

with some medications like

anti-inflammatory medications

and people do very well

and go home from the hospital and and

recover fully i would say it is still

safe and recommended for everyone to be

vaccinated

even with these rare conditions that

have been found to be associated with

the vaccines

because the risks are far outweighed by

the benefits of vaccination

we have not seen any concerns for

reproductive side effects from any of

the covet vaccines and that

includes fertility as well as birth

outcomes

these concerns arose out of an internet

rumor

which is actually a complete fabrication

there is no concern for

safety of women who are pregnant women

who are trying to conceive

or for future reproductive development