Vaccinations surpass COVID cases in county
Milestone comes as virus variants spread
The number of people who have been fully vaccinated in Shelby County has now surpassed the number of COVID-19 cases reported in the county since the beginning of the pandemic. And while the true number of infections is likely much higher than the reported total, it’s still a milestone, local experts say.
The milestone is all the more important as more contagious variants, including some which the vaccines seem to be less effective against, spread locally.
Dr. Manoj Jain, an infectious disease expert advising the city of Memphis, said the pace of vaccinations and increasing the percentage of the population fully vaccinated, helps hold down the transmission number, which is how many new cases each infection causes.
“It matters tremendously in protecting us against the U.K. [variant],” Jain said of the threshold Shelby County just crossed.
As of Monday, 91,037 total COVID-19 cases have been reported in Shelby County. There have been 299,162 total doses of COVID-19 vaccine given out, 96,545 of which were second doses, according to the Shelby County Health Department. About 10% of the total county population has been fully vaccinated.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are effective against the U.K. variant despite it being more contagious than
the initial virus strain. Jain said the most recent batch of virus sequencing done in Shelby County showed 50% of the samples positive for COVID-19 were the U.K. variant.
Data from initial clinical trials showed both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were extremely effective at preventing serious illness and death related to the virus. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Monday showed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are also highly effective in preventing asymptomatic COVID-19 infection.
However, Jain said it is not clear how effective the vaccines are against the P.1 variant, which officials confirmed Monday is present in Shelby County.
Dr. Steve Threlkeld, co-chair of the infection control program at Baptist Memorial Hospital-memphis, said the ratio of vaccinated people to those who have been infected becomes much more important as variants spread.
People who have developed some immunity to certain strains after recovering from the virus remain vulnerable to the Brazilian variant in particular.
“It is hoped that the vaccine is more protective against those new variants than is natural infection and the immunity we get from natural infection. It’s not perfect. It’s decreased,” he said. “But clearly you’re safer with the vaccine than you are with natural infection.”
Another challenge is the fact that Shelby County, like many other places, could soon be in a situation where there’s more vaccine than people willing to get it.
The City of Memphis announced last week it was opening vaccinations up to everyone age 16 and older, in part because of decreasing demand, city chief operating officer Doug Mcgowen said.
However, the pace of vaccinations locally has steadily increased as supply and eligibility have opened up. Health department data showed almost 50,000 vaccinations were reported last week, the highest one-week total since vaccinations began.
While every dose given is not necessarily reflected in the data released the next day, it gives an illustration of the increased pace of vaccinations.
“It does make us realize we’re catching up, that we’re finally getting up to a speed of vaccination that is going to get us somewhere,” Threlkeld said.
However, he cautioned we can’t outrun the U.K. variant, which is causing a new wave of the pandemic across Europe, where many countries have not been vaccinating as quickly as in the U.S.
“The main thing that we have to do is vaccinate everyone in sight,” he said. “All roads come back to the fact that we need to be vaccinating faster.”
Commercial Appeal reporter Sam Hardiman contributed to this story.
Corinne Kennedy covers economic development, soccer and COVID-19’S impact on hospitals for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Corinne.kennedy@commercialappeal.com or at 901-297-3245.