(Ford Lauderdale) The COVID-19 outbreak in the United States crossed 100,000 new confirmed daily infections on Saturday, the last milestone during the winter wave and is driven by the delta variation and weak vaccination rate that is most prevalent in the south of the country.
Health officials fear that cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to rise if more Americans are not vaccinated. Nationally, 50% of residents are fully vaccinated and more than 70% of adults receive at least one dose.
“Our samples could go up to several million cases a day, like our increase in early January, if we don’t vaccinate more people,” said Rochelle Walenski, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on CNN this week.
It took the US about nine months to cross the 100,000 daily daily average in November, before rising to about 250,000 in early January. The number of cases peaked in June, averaging 11,000 a day, but six weeks later it was 107,143.
Despite being below the heights seen earlier this year before vaccines became widely available, hospital admissions and deaths are on the rise. According to the CDC, more than 44,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, an increase of 30% in one week and almost four times more than in June.
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