Abstract
The results are in and deeply troubling: in the absence of rapid, comprehensive vaccination rollouts, SARS-CoV-2 runs amok, mutates into more contagious variants and, for the unvaccinated, kills at a breakneck pace. Witness the Delta variant that research suggests is more than twice as contagious as the original strain that ripped the world asunder in […]
Highlights
The results are in and deeply troubling: in the absence of rapid, comprehensive vaccination rollouts, SARS-CoV-2 runs amok, mutates into more contagious variants and, for the unvaccinated, kills at a breakneck pace
The news is not at all good, for the unvaccinated: contracting Delta means a one-way ticket to the hospital, all too often followed by the morgue
Vaccination rates are widely uneven. This is the region hardest hit by the pandemic far: with just 8.4% of the world’s population, it accounts for 32.5% of COVID-19–related deaths.[6,7]
Summary
The results are in and deeply troubling: in the absence of rapid, comprehensive vaccination rollouts, SARS-CoV-2 runs amok, mutates into more contagious variants and, for the unvaccinated, kills at a breakneck pace. In a sobering open letter to President Biden (in our new documents section, Keynotes, this issue), top Cuban scientists and vaccine developers put it this way: “during the pandemic, science reiterates that (politics aside) we are all in this together...the essential question, for Cuba and the US, and for human civilization, is whether nations can respect each other enough to exist side-by-side and cooperate.”[17] Compiling this issue of MEDICC Review has been a Herculean effort, as Cuba and many in Latin America are in the throes of the worst COVID-19 wave to date. Clinical trials are ongoing for use of the vaccines in youngsters and convalescent patients; for a nasally-administered vaccine; and for a number of COVID-19 treatments and much-needed medical equipment, such as ventilators. (See our exclusive with Olga Lidia Jacobo, Director of Cuba’s National Regulatory Authority, this issue)
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