Covid-19 hospitalizations in Florida increased 13% from previous peak in July 2020

At the current rate of vaccinations, it will be until mid-February to get at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine to all eligible Americans, according to a CNN analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 90 million eligible people in the United States remain unvaccinated. And while the seven-day average of people starting immunizations each day is the highest since July 4 at 446,300, many experts say the United States is still not where it needs to be to catch the pandemic – and the rapidly spreading Delta variant – under control.

With less than half of the population fully vaccinated, cases have increased again, causing serious illness.

On Tuesday, for the first time since February, more than 50,000 hospital beds across the country were occupied by Covid-19 patients, according to new data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. This number is more than triple what it was a month ago.

“We’re not crying wolf here. This surge that we are currently going through has all the potential to be – and already appears to be – the worst surge we have faced so far, ”former US Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams said during a live online interview with Washington. Post on Tuesday.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, said Tuesday he would like the United States to be on more than a million vaccinations per day to close the vaccination gap.

With the spread of the Delta variant, it might not be possible to completely stop the spread of the coronavirus, National Institutes of Health director Dr Francis Collins said on Tuesday.

“But we could always come to a place where it would become a nuisance instead of a threat to your life.”

Although experts said the data so far did not indicate that the general population needed booster vaccines, Fauci said an effort was underway to obtain them for those who are immunocompromised.

Some conditions, including autoimmune diseases, transplants, and cancer treated with chemotherapy, compromise people’s immune systems.

“These people we know almost invariably don’t have an adequate response, so the need to give them an extra boost is much more urgent than the general population,” Fauci said at a virtual event hosted by the Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on Tuesday.

CDC vaccine advisers have met to discuss whether immunocompromised people might need additional protection against a vaccine booster, but have yet to make a formal recommendation or vote on guidance.

“We are working to get the regulatory mechanism in place very soon to give these people a boost that could raise their immunity to where it should be, if possible,” Fauci said.

During a discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday, Fauci said it was “very likely” that variants of Covid-19 have evolved in the bodies of those who are immunocompromised.

People who are immunocompromised may be unable to fight off Covid-19 infections for weeks or even months, which means the virus has plenty of time to evolve and change.

“Variants, we all know, have arisen due to the strain that the human immune system put on the virus, most likely from people who are immunocompromised … and who had the virus in them for days and days and days before eliminating it and / or died, then essentially led to the emergence of a variant, ”Fauci said.