Saint Joseph Mercy doctor: Most serious Covid cases preventable with vaccine

FOX 2 - Get ready to roll up your sleeves again as the US is now going to offer booster COVID-19 vaccines to all Americans next month.

There are concerns over COVID-19 and the delta variant as our kids return to school and businesses try to get back to work.

So what are hospitals dealing with? FOX 2 asked Dr. Anurag Malani, the infectious disease lead for COVID-19 response at Saint Joseph Mercy Health.

"When we able to measure immune response, especially for those vaccinated in December and January,  we see an individual can have decreasing immunity, meaning their antibody levels are going down. And what we do know with the delta variant is there is less room for error," he said. "So we want to make sure we are not only protected but we also want to make sure we prevent people from transmitting the virus.

Dr. Malani described what he has seen in the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital System.

"The people we see primarily, are unvaccinated," he said. "What's difficult about this situation is, every ICU case, every death, is potentially preventable through a safe and effective vaccine."

 Dr. Anurag Malani

And right now the numbers are trending in the wrong direction. 

"Specifically in Ann Arbor, where I am at right now, we have had about 20 to 25 patients hospitalized with Covid," he said. "If you look back to where we were a couple of weeks ago, that's about a 500 percent increase."

As data is released doctors will continue to update their advice.