COVID-19 Is Rising in the Ozarks, and Time Is Running Out
It’s a perfect storm of the extra-contagious delta variant, GOP defiance, and low vaccination rates. We need to prevent it from spreading.
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Some of us in the biomedical scientific community predicted that low vaccination coverage in Southern states, together with the emergence of the highly transmissible delta variant of the SARS-2 coronavirus, would precipitate COVID-19 outbreaks or even a resurgence this summer.
Right on cue, the start of summer is coinciding with COVID-19 resurfacing in force in the Ozark states of Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
These three states are now seeing some of the fastest-growing new seven-day case increases in the nation. Not surprisingly, Freeman Health System located in Joplin—one of the worst-affected areas so far this summer—just reopened its COVID ward after shutting down in March, and Southwest Missouri ICUs are reportedly filling up.
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