GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – As Fourth of July fireworks lit up the night, sky people celebrated our nation’s independence, but the country still isn’t free from the lingering coronavirus.
Wisconsin missed President Biden’s Fourth of July vaccine goal by close to 20%.
Right now, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports that 50.5 % of Wisconsinites have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Brown County (50.3%), Outagamie County (50.1%) and Winnebago County (48.3%) are close to the same state percentage.
“We won’t be done until the virus is gone,” said Prevea Health President and CEO Dr. Ashok Rai.
Dr. Rai tells FOX 11 Wisconsin and the rest of the country are worried about the Delta variant compared to the vaccination rate.
“If you look at 18 and older probably close to 60% but still not high enough especially in a space with a version of the virus that replicates so quickly.”
“What does it mean for our community to not hit that 70% benchmark?” asked FOX 11.
“Probably the biggest thing that not hitting that number means is that we’re still going to live with COVID, we’re still going to have COVID related infections, we’re still going to have COVID related deaths unfortunately.”
Dr. Rai says there is no particular new benchmark to hit other than getting as many people vaccinated as they can, so the virus doesn’t hang out any longer.
“We’re going to see much more of that delta variant, it’s going to spread much more rapidly so once it gets a hold of the community, it will be a lot more significant, we are seeing that in other parts of the world.”
Dr. Rai says since most of the Fourth of July celebrations took place outside, he doesn’t think the holiday will cause a big uptick in COVID-19 cases.
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