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Dr. Rachel Lacount seized a metal hoop in a playground and spun in circles with his 7-year-old son, turning the remote Mesas from the Colorado National Monument in a stuck blur.

Lacount lived in this city of Western Colorado of 64,000 almost all his life. As a pathologist of the hospital, she knows better than most that her hometown has become one of the leading nation's main breeding grounds for the VVID-19 delta variant.

"The super frightening of the variant of Delta," said Lacount.

This highly transmissible variant, first detected in India, is nowThe dominant Covid strain in the USA.Colorado is part of the states With the highest proportion of the Delta variant, according to disease control and prevention centers.

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The County of Mesa has the most delta variant cases of any Colorado county, state health officials, which makes the area at a warm place in a warm place. A team of CDC and the state epidemiologist went to great junction to investigate how the variant cases moved so quickly in Mesa County.

At his hospital, Lacount put in order fasterCOVID Tests as the case load has increased. She saw that the intensive care unit begins to fill with COVID patients, so that hospital leaders place two in a workpiece against normal practices.

Despite these alarming signs, many in Mesa County have dropped their guard. The rate of eligible residents fullyvaccinated Called about 42%. Lacount has noticed that few people wear more masks at the grocery store. Thousands of people have recently flooded in Mack, 20 km from Grand Junction, to attend theCountry jam Music Festival, which could accelerate the spread of the variant in the hometown of homes.

"We do national news for our variant of Covid and the CDC is here in investigation, but we have a huge festival where people do not hide," said Lacount. "Are we going to have an immunity from the flock here simply because everyone will get it? I mean, it will probably happen at some point, but at what cost?"

The worries of the lacount are not necessarily for itself or its spouse - they are both vaccinated - but for their son, who can not be vaccinated because it is less than 12 years old. It is bad about sending it to school at the fall of fear of exposure to the variant. She hesitates to take him to birthday parties this summer, knowing that there is a good likelihood that he will be cured to wear a mask.

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A few meters from the lacount and his son on the playground, a man fished in a pond still with his daughter of 10 months in a backpack. Garrett Whiping, who works in construction, said he believes that Covid is always "proportion blown", especially by the media.

"They were afraid that everyone really frightened, really fast," said Whiting, slowly engaging in a brilliant blue lure of the water. "There is no reason to stop living your life just because you are afraid of something."

Whiting positive tested for Covid about three months earlier. He said he does not plan to be vaccinated or his wife. As for the baby on the back, he said he did not know if they will be vaccinated when the regulators approve the shooting of young children.

The Delta variant is one of the four "Variations of concern"By circulating in the United States, according to the CDC, because the Delta strain is spreading more easily, could be more resistant to treatment and could be better by infecting people vaccinated than other variants.

The Delta variant has raised alarms around the world. Parts of Australia havelocked up again After the variant jumps its path from an American crew crew toa birthday party where he infectedAll non-vaccinated guests, said the health officials and after having also jumped between the buyers in a "gust"While two people happened in a shopping center. IsraelRebate an internal mask requirement After a crisis of new cases related to schoolchildren. aA health manager said About one third of the 125 infected people have been vaccinated and most new infections were a delta variant.

An increase in Delta variant cases delayed the planned reopening of the United Kingdom in June. But public health officials haveconcluded After studying about 14,000 Delta variant in this country that integral vaccination with the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine is effective 96% against hospitalization. Studiesaround the world have made similar conclusions. There is also evidence of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccinesare effective against The variant.

County Los Angeles Recently recommended that residents take up masks inside, regardless of vaccination status, worrying the Delta variant. The World Health Organization isas exhorting People vaccinated to wear masks, although the CDC has not changed its guidelines for vaccinated people to meet inside without masks.

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The variant arrived in the County of Mesa this spring, when he represented only 1% of all cases nationwide, said Jeff Kuhr, Executive Director of Public Health of the County of Mesa.

"We went back like everyone else. We were less than five cases a day. I think we had about two hospitalized people at one point," Kuhr said. "We felt like we were out of the woods."

He even put on the country jam, which is invoicing as the "largest group of country music" ".

But in early May, the delta variant appeared in a burst, with five cases in adults working for the school district.

"It started hitting children, those who were not aged to be vaccinated," Kuhr said. "It told me that, you know that wearing masks at school did not provide the protection of this new variant it had previously."

The county then begun to see revolutionary cases in elderly residents fully vaccinated in long-term care facilities. Hospitals started filling once again. Nine vaccinated people have died, seven of them since the arrival of the delta variant, although it is still unclear if the variant is to blame. All had at least 75 years and seven people lived in long-term care facilities. Now, Kuhr estimates, "above 90%" cases in the county are the variant of Delta.

The county notes the same trend as the state: the vast majority of people who are positive for Covid and the hospitalized persons are unvaccinated. "It's a supersfeader strain if there were an" Eric Topol with the Scripps Research InstitutionRecountAmerican scientist. But he stated that people are fully vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna Shots "should not worry at all". There is less information about the protection offered by Johnson & Johnson's vaccine.

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Mesa County Health Officers considered the cancellation of the music festival, but "it was really too late," Kuhr said. After the announcement that the festival was lit, about 23,000 people bought tickets.

Managers have weighed the prohibition of alcohol or trying to bring participants a single dose vaccine Johnson & Johnson in the weeks that preceded the festival. In the end, they settled on the messaging: signs of the online warning signs and the place of the area of ​​the Covid Hot region.

According to CDC guidelines, outdoor events were a low risk. A sporting event at the end of May with a junction that has filled a baseball stadium had only one known case, which made Kuhr optimistic.

"We put messaging on the Country Jam website, then in their social media pages, saying," The County of Mesa is a hot spot. Be ready, "Kuhr says.

A stormy Friday has mitigated attendance at concert at country jam. But the last day of the festival, the sun was out of the Cowboy Boot-Clad Coundogers scarves got up around meadow dog burrows and launched a gray-yellow dust on the way to the entrance of the room.

Many have proved to be able to attend a summer event like an outdoor festival, taking it as another sign that the pandemic was taking place.

"Covid is finished in Colorado," said Ryan Barkley, a Durango student playing pong beer in an inflatable pool at his campsite outside the doors.

That day, 39 people in the county were hospitalized with COVID and a CDC survey team had just four days earlier.

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Inside doors, open land was filled with steps, concession stands and suppliers selling cowboy hats, coffee cups and hunting clothes - and people's crowds. Chelsea Sonderoth and her 5 year old daughter took in the scene.

"It's just nice to see people's faces again," said Sondageroth, who lives in Grand Junction and had previously Covid. She described it as one of the sweetest diseases she ever had, even if her sense of taste and smells are not returned to normal. The watermelon tasted her, the beer tastes like Windex for a moment and her daughter said that Sidgeoth could not feel some flowers.

Sidgeoth said she stops being vaccinated until new research comes out.

Waiting online at Stand Daiquiri, Alicia Nix was one of the few people to wear a mask. "I had people who say you know:" That kind of thing is over. Take and remove it, "says Nix, who is vaccinated." It's not over. "

In the midst of music, beer and dance, a bus transformed into a mobile vaccine clinic was empty. A nurse on duty played Jenga with a National Army Sustain. Only six people thousands of people have been vaccinated on the bus.

"You can lead a horse to the water, but you can not make them drink," says Nix from behind his blue surgical mask.

Kn (Kaiser Health News) is a national press room that produces in-depth journalism on health problems.