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Vaccinations against COVID-19 have increased by 14% over the past week, White House officials said on Friday, as the most contagious delta variant spreads rapidly in under-vaccinated areas.
“In the past 7 days, 2.15 million said they had been newly vaccinated, up from 1.88 million the previous 7 days (+ 14%),” Cyrus Shahpar, COVID-19 data director of the White House on Twitter.
“The delta variant is very contagious and circulates throughout the United States,” he added. “To get vaccinated!”
The delta variant now accounts for more than 80% of cases, Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday, up from 50% in early July.
It is not known at this time whether the increase in vaccinations is a failure or a trend. An ABC News analysis of CDC data shows that as of Thursday the number of COVID-19 vaccinations had peaked at around 530,000 total injections given per day. Over the past week, an average of 297,202 people started vaccination per day, 9.6% more than the previous seven days.
On average, 236,791 adults started vaccination each day in the past seven days, 7.4% more than the previous seven days, according to the analysis. Among 12 to 17 year olds, this number has increased by almost 20%.
The five states that currently have the highest rates of COVID-19 cases are seeing their immunization numbers increase, according to the White House. Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada are seeing a higher rate of people getting their first shot compared to the national average, White House coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters on Thursday. on COVID-19.
“This is a very positive trend,” he added.
According to epidemiologist and ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein, visits to the vaccines.gov website from users in Alabama – the least vaccinated state – have increased three times in the past two weeks. . Meanwhile, residents of Louisiana and Missouri have doubled their visits to the site, he found, suggesting that people there are looking for information on where to get vaccinated.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey on Friday called on people to get vaccinated, as the daily average of new COVID-19 cases has tripled in the past two weeks in the state.
“Let’s do it, and we know what it takes to do it – take a bullet in the arm,” she said at a press briefing. “I did it, for sure, it’s effective, the data proves it works, it costs nothing, it saves lives.”
Just under 34% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
“People are supposed to have common sense,” Ivey said. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated people, not the common people. It was the unvaccinated people who let us down.”
The Louisiana Department of Health released new COVID-19 guidelines on Friday, recommending the wearing of the mask indoors regardless of vaccination status “in light of Louisiana’s troubling COVID-19 trends in cases and hospitalizations “, Governor John Bel Edwards said on twitter.
“Louisiana is undeniably in a fourth wave of COVID,” the governor said at a press briefing Friday afternoon, as the state reported 3,127 new cases. The state’s average daily number of cases per 100,000 population has increased 208% in the past 14 days.
“Louisiana now has the highest growth rate of cases per capita in the United States of America. I want to let that penetrate,” said Bel Edwards, attributing this to the widespread transmission of the delta variant and the “very low percentage of people who have been vaccinated. “
According to the governor, about 48% of residents aged 12 and over have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“This number is well below what we need to be to have the protection we need to slow the spread and move towards ending the pandemic,” he said.
An encouraging sign, and the governor noted he hopes to continue, is that vaccinations have increased over the past two weeks, state officials said, from an average of 2,000 vaccine initiations per day. at about 5,000 a day.
“This push is upon us,” Bel Edwards said. “How bad it gets, how long it stays bad, how many people eventually die – on us.” “
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik and Jason Volack contributed to this report.
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