#PROVINCETOWN COVID OUTBREAK UPDATE#
#PROVINCETOWN COVID OUTBREAK PROFESSIONAL#

“I left work and got tested,” Billy told The Daily Beast, noting that only he-and not his partner-tested positive for COVID-19.

To make matters worse, Billy told The Daily Beast, his partner was also experiencing symptoms-along with other PTown visitors and residents, some of whom were going online to report a positive diagnosis after the holiday weekend. He had a headache, fatigue, nausea, congestion, diarrhea, and a slight cough.

#PROVINCETOWN COVID OUTBREAK PROFESSIONAL#

But the fact that roughly half the nation is already vaccinated likely saved the United States from an even deadlier summer surge, experts agreed.About ten days after Billy went with his partner and a friend to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a Cape Cod tourist hub popular with the LGBTQ+ community affectionately known as “PTown,” to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend, he started to feel sick.ĭespite getting his second jab of the Moderna vaccine in April, the 26-year-old grocery store worker from Boston-who asked his last name be withheld for professional reasons-said his symptoms mirrored all the indicators of the novel coronavirus that has plagued the United States for over a year. The CDC brief said one of the agency's biggest challenges moving forward is countering the public perception that vaccines don't work. 'Current vaccines continue to provide strong protection against severe illness and death, but the delta variant is likely responsible for increased numbers of breakthrough infections - breakthroughs that could be as infectious as unvaccinated cases,' said John Brownstein, Ph.D., the chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and an ABC News contributor. But they may not work as well at preventing mild infections. People are saying, enough is enough.'Įxperts say this is still a pandemic largely of the unvaccinated, with a majority of cases among unvaccinated people, meaning it's more important than ever for anyone who is not vaccinated to get vaccinated.Ĭrucially, current vaccines appear to work just as well against delta to dramatically reduce the risk of severe illness and death. 'That’s why you’re seeing mandates come left and right. so fast that only in the past few weeks has sufficient data emerged to show scientists just how significant those differences were.Īlthough it now seems that vaccinated people can pass the virus, 'the great majority of transmissions is still coming from unvaccinated people,' Del Rio said. and swept the United States during the 2020-2021 winter surge.īut the delta variant - which only just surpassed alpha as the dominant variant on July 6 - is different. Throughout the spring and summer, the CDC based its guidance on scientific studies of prior COVID-19 variants, including the then-dominant alpha variant, which was first identified in the U.K. 'We have a different epidemic now that we did in May.' Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

#PROVINCETOWN COVID OUTBREAK UPDATE#

Taken collectively, these new revelations prompted the CDC to update its mask guidance Tuesday to recommend that vaccinated people once again don masks indoors, especially in high-transmission areas. It's also possible delta leads to more severe illness, but for now this is only a possibility and not firmly established. Chiefly, this variant appears to be extraordinarily contagious - possibly more so than Ebola, Spanish flu, chickenpox and the common cold.

Meanwhile, an internal CDC briefing first published by the Washington Post and confirmed by ABC News outlined additional new data suggesting that the delta variant is different from prior variants in other ways. The CDC report noted the social gatherings were 'densely packed.' And breakthrough infections are still relatively uncommon, with the majority of cases driven by spread among unvaccinated people. Experts caution that more studies are needed to understand if what happened in Provincetown holds up in subsequent outbreak investigations.

Provincetown covid outbreak