Covid-19 vaccines work 'exceptionally well' against severe illness and death but no longer prevent transmission, CDC chief says

• Covid-19 vaccines no longer prevent transmission, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said Thursday. 'Our vaccines ae working exceptionally well,' Walensky told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. 'They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death - they prevent it. But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission.'
• That's why the CDC changed its guidance last week and is now recommending even vaccinated people wear masks in indoor settings again, Walensky said.
• Last week, the agency released a study that showed the Delta variant produced similar amounts of virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated people if they got infected - data that suggests vaccinated people could have a similar tendency to spread the virus as the unvaccinated.
• 'If you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, to somebody who can't get vaccinated, somebody who might be immunosuppressed or a little bit frail, somebody who has comorbidities that put them at high risk, I would suggest you wear a mask in public indoor settings,' Walensky said.
• The dangerous Delta variant has fuelled the country's latest surge of Covid-19 cases and if more Americans don't get vaccinated and mask up, the country could soon be seeing 'several hundred thousand cases a day,' similar to the winter surge, Walensky said.
• And while states across the South - including Florida and Louisiana - have seen exponential rises in cases, Walensky said, they have not reached their peak just yet.

Next variant is just around the corner

• Getting more people vaccinated won't just help crush this surge, experts say. It will help prevent other - potentially even more aggressive - variants from arising in the future.
• 'The next variant is just around the corner, if we do not all get vaccinated,' Adm. Brett Giroir, the former coronavirus testing czar under President Donald Trump, told CNN's Chris Cuomo.
• 'I just beg the American people to understand that to defeat this virus, we have to get everybody's level of immunity up, and that is just the way it is,' he added.
• Roughly 58.2% of the U.S. population has receive at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, CDC data shows, and about 59.9% is fully vaccinated.
• There was some encouraging news Thursday, as White House data director Dr Cyrus Shahpar tweeted there had been the most number of vaccine doses reported administered in a single day in more than a month. He said that more than 864,000 doses had been reported administered over the previous day's total, including about 585,000 people who got their first shot.
• In the coming weeks, surges will likely reach all across the USA, not just areas with low vaccination rates, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Wednesday. The outbreaks, however, will not be as explosive in areas with higher vaccination coverage, Frieden added.
  
• As cases increase, hospitalizations and deaths will likely rise as well, according to ensemble forecasts published Wednesday by the CDC. The forecast predicts a total of 624,000 to 642,000 deaths will be reported by August 28. As of Wednesday, there have been 614, 342 Covid-19 deaths in the USA, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University.
• If you're not protected against Covid-19, the virus will likely infect you, Michael Osterhom, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN's Pamela Brown on Wednesday.
• 'The virus is highly infectious. If you decide to try to run the game clock out, don't try and do this. The virus will find you, it will infect you eventually,' Osterholm said.
• Fortunately, the available vaccines appear to offer a strong defence against the Delta variant, especially when it comes to severe illness and deaths, Frieden said.
• 'We are at war with this virus that has already killed more than 610,000 Americans. We now have the tools with vaccines and masks to stop further death and suffering and destruction,' CNN medical analyst Leana Wen said Wednesday.