The spread of the Delta variant has public health officials in the U.K. projecting as many as 100,000 new daily cases “within weeks,” although the country’s high vaccination rates mean the number of hospitalizations and deaths will be lower than previous waves. But they are rising, and they’re rising even faster in places like Texas and Florida, where half the adult population has yet to receive their first dose. And while Canada is now ahead of the United States in terms of the numbers of people who are fully vaccinated, we’re not out of the woods yet.
That’s because the new and more contagious variants mean so-called “herd immunity” requires 75 to 90 per cent vaccination rates, not the 60 to 70 per cent previously seen as the threshold. And because children under 12 can’t get vaccinated yet and represent approximately 13 per cent of the population, that means we need just about everyone over the age of 12 to get vaccinated.
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