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The CDC said this week that more than 10 percent of Americans have received just one dose and opted to skip the second vaccine, which could prove problematic as the more transmissible Delta COVID-19 variant continues to rapidly spread and become more dominant.
According to the CDC, just 88 percent of those who received one dose of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine - which requires two shots to complete the vaccination series - have received a second, down from a 92 percent completion rate earlier this year when vaccination programs began ramping up.
Approximately 15 million Americans are currently not fully vaccinated, while nearly half the population has not been vaccinated at all.
The CDC notes that studies have shown that vaccines are decidedly more effective against the Delta variant after the vaccination series is completed with both shots.
“As this virus has mutated, there are versions of it which are better able to escape some of the immune protection that we get from the vaccine," US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN last week, citing research that found that two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine offered 88 percent protection, compared to 33 percent protection after just one.
"The key is, get vaccinated. Get both doses.”
Federal health officials have cautioned that the new Delta variant is likely to become the new dominant strain of the virus in the US, leading to new calls for Americans to get vaccinated.
“Unless we vaccinate a significant percentage of the population before winter hits, you're going to see more spread and the creation of more variants, which will only make this task more difficult.”
Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said that variants should not be a concern to those who are vaccinated, and that the emergence of the Delta strain and other variants provide extra incentive to get the vaccine.
“The combination of more transmissibility and greater severity of disease, appropriately, prompted the CDC to elevate it to a variant of concern,” he said this week.
“I'm not concerned about the people who are vaccinated. Because the good news about all this, among the seriousness of the situation with regards to the variant, is that the vaccines work really quite well.”
People who are vaccinated are protected, he noted, "which is another very good reason to encourage people strongly to get vaccinated because if you are not vaccinated, you are at risk of getting infected with a virus that now spreads more rapidly and gives more serious disease.”
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