"The equivalent of that with the Delta variant is not 15 minutes, it's one second."
That means people might need to do more than one thing to protect themselves from the more transmissible variant, said Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at NYU's Grossman School of Medicine.In addition to vaccination, "Some of the other layers that we should consider would be masking indoors when you're outside of your household bubble, optimizing ventilation in the home -- just opening your window works really well," she said.People should think in terms of how much virus there is in the air, plus how long they might be in contact with that virus-laden air.On Sunday, Los Angeles County officials said hospitalizations surpassed 700 for the first time since March.
In Florida, state health data shows new case positivity nearly doubled in two weeks, from 7.8% the week of July 2 to 15.1%.A total of 870 hospitalized patients were reported Sunday in Alabama, according to the state's public health Covid-19 dashboard.Hospitalizations there have been steadily rising since early July: On July 4 there were just 213 hospitalized patients reported.
And Louisiana now has the highest increase in cases per capita in the US, state officials said Friday."We know that more than 80% of these are the Delta variant -- that is what's causing this surge," Gov.