(INDIANAPOLIS) – Health officials are expecting a fresh resurgence of coronavirus in Indiana as the Delta variant picks up steam.
Indiana’s COVID death rate has slowed to a trickle, averaging three a day. But state health commissioner Kristina Box says cases and hospitalizations are edging up. The state has had 400 new cases two days in a row, for the first time since May. And while hospitalizations have been lower for the last month than at any point in the pandemic, they’re up 13% since a record low two weeks ago.
Box says the main reason is the Delta variant. The variant first spotted in India is far more infectious, and health department chief medical officer Lindsay Weaver says it may be more severe — she says the fact it enlarges the pool of cases makes it more dangerous by itself.
Delta still represents just one of every 36 virus samples analyzed by the health department lab. The Alpha strain traced to Britain is still the most common. But Box says more than half the samples analyzed over the last month have been Delta.
Box says a fresh round of nursing home outbreaks produced 27 COVID cases in four counties which has killed seven residents. One of those outbreaks was the Alpha variant — the Department of Health is awaiting lab results on the others.
Box says most of those patients hadn’t been vaccinated. She says the health department is holding town hall-style meetings for unvaccinated residents and staff at those facilities, listening to their concerns about the shot and explaining the importance of getting vaccinated.
Weaver says getting vaccinated protects you against the Delta variant too. She says the health department is monitoring reports of diminished effectiveness in Israel and elsewhere, but says Indiana hasn’t had the surge of so-called “breakthrough” cases that would indicate the vaccine is overmatched. 98% of Indiana’s cases and 99% of the deaths since the first Hoosiers were fully vaccinated in January have been unvaccinated people.
With the vaccine still providing full protection, Weaver says Indiana’s following Centers for Disease Control guidance and not recommending a booster shot, but will continue tracking vaccine and case data.
About half of eligible Hoosiers still haven’t gotten vaccinated. Box says some people are still hung up on the vaccines’ emergency authorization, wrongly viewing the vaccines as “experimental.” She says the vaccine is the most extensively tested in history, and says the White House and CDC have said on conference calls it’s time for the FDA to grant full approval.
Box says removing the “emergency” tag would nudge some people to get the shot. For others, she says it takes nonjudgmental, one-on-one conversations to dispel misinformation and break down doubts. The health department has begun sending vaccine doses to individual doctor’s offices who request it — some patients have said they trust their family doctor to give them the vaccine, and no one else.
