But in the face of a highly contagious new variant, a high vaccination rate is not that meaningful anymore, Mr. Irizarry said. Most in Puerto Rico have passed the six-month limit beyond which the vaccine’s effectiveness begins to wane, yet at least 40 percent have yet to receive their booster shots, health officials said. At one point this week, the daily case count had surpassed 11,000, a very high figure for an island with just 3.2 million inhabitants. The exponential increases have begun to taper off, but case numbers are still climbing, Mr. Irizarry said. “I first noticed something going on on Dec. 13, and I alerted the Department of Health,” he said.

Source: New York Times January 03, 2022 08:10 UTC