Incentive to vaccination, wearing a mask ... the Delta variant pushes the United States to toughen up

100 dollars reward (84 euros), for anyone who agrees to be vaccinated, wearing a mask highly recommended indoors and outdoors where the virus is circulating strongly, vaccination particularly encouraged for federal personnel ... Faced with the Covid-19 which shakes America again, Joe Biden takes the bull by the horns.

The US president has just announced a series of measures to try to control the spread of the Delta variant.

From now on, millions of federal employees will either have to be vaccinated or comply with a series of constraints, the White House said.

Unvaccinated people will be required to wear the mask even in areas where virus circulation is low, and will have to undergo regular tests, once or twice a week.

Their movements will also be limited.

Without going as far as the outright vaccination obligation, this is a change of course for the Biden administration.

As contagious as chickenpox?

This turn is not only the wrong turn that the epidemic takes again on the American territory which imposes it with hospitalizations in clear increase (+ 73% including 97% of unvaccinated people), and a surge of cases contamination (+ 146% over the past two weeks). These are also worrying new health data.

According to internal documents from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the US health agency, just posted on Friday, the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox, an infected person transmitting the virus to eight others, on average. And whether one is vaccinated or not, "the viral load remains the same", showed analyzes made among bathers widely vaccinated two-thirds in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, during vacation in early July. Did the vaccinated transmit as much as the unvaccinated? The study does not say so. But caution, say the CDC experts who recommend, to return to wearing a mask, even when you are vaccinated, in all indoor places where there is a public (schools, shopping centers, offices).

Read also Vaccination race: how the United States, gone far ahead, are left behind

After having promised "a summer of freedom" to the Americans, here is Joe Biden caught up in his turn by the pandemic, while the Americans have been shunning the vaccination campaign since May.

On July 4, National Day, they were only 68.4% of adults to have received at least one dose, below the 70% set by the administration of Joe Biden.

How to convince them? In New York, in accordance with the checkbook tactic advocated by the White House, Mayor Bill de Blasio has just offered $ 100 to the recalcitrant, while retailer Walmart, the country's largest employer with 1.5 million employees, has doubled at 150 dollars, the proposed incentive while establishing the vaccination obligation for employees at its headquarters. By October 4, all must have received the necessary injections, "under penalty of dismissal".