COVID deaths in the United States are on the rise again. Experts call it an “unvaccinated pandemic”

The COVID-19 death rate in the United States is rising steadily for the first time in months as the country grapples with a new explosion of cases in what has become “an unvaccinated pandemic,” the chief of staff. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The seven-day national average of new cases increased by almost 70% to almost 30,000 per day; hospitalizations are up 36 percent. And deaths from the virus have risen steadily in recent days, reversing a multi-month downtrend that began in mid-January.

“There is a clear message going: this is becoming an unvaccinated pandemic,” CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky said in a White House COVID-19 response team briefing on Friday. . “Our greatest concern is that we will continue to see preventable cases, hospitalizations and, unfortunately, deaths among the unvaccinated.”

The upward trend in national statistics is almost entirely due to outbreaks in places with low vaccination rates, such as the Ozarks, Florida and parts of Mountain West. Some counties, particularly Missouri and Arkansas, are seeing more cases now than they did during the winter.

“Unvaccinated Americans account for virtually all recent hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19,” said Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator. “Every death from COVID-19 is tragic, and those that occur now are even more tragic because they are preventable.”

More than 99% of recent deaths were among the unvaccinated, infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said earlier this month on NBC. Meet the press, while Walensky noted on Friday that unvaccinated people accounted for more than 97% of hospitalizations.

About 56 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, but in many counties – especially in rural America – that number is below 20 percent despite the widespread availability of the vaccine.

Officials said the low rate created environments where the virus can spread relatively unhindered, and urged unvaccinated Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

“Every person counts. Every shot counts. Every shot is progress,” Zients said. “It’s another protected life, another safer community. It’s another step in putting this pandemic behind us.”

Although the number of daily vaccinations nationwide continues to decline, the states currently hardest hit by the virus – Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, and Nevada – all had higher rates of people seeking the vaccine than the United States. national average, Zients said.

The White House has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to convince more young people to get vaccinated. Pop star Olivia Rodrigo took to the White House to record public service announcements on Wednesday, and Fauci began doing interviews on TikTok.

Administration officials see misinformation as a major obstacle to achieving vaccination goals. Conspiracy theories and lies about coronavirus vaccines have proliferated in right-wing media and on social media sites such as Facebook, where posts with bad vaccine safety information have spread faster than administrators cannot delete them.

“Health misinformation has cost us lives,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, told Friday’s briefing.

This week, Murthy issued a warning from a surgeon general regarding online disinformation and called on social media companies to do more to combat the spread of conspiracies.

Asked about his post to social media companies on Friday, President Joe Biden said, “They’re killing people. I mean, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

Copyright 2021 NPR. To learn more, visit https://www.npr.org.