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All 50 states reported more cases of COVID-19 in the most recent 7-day period than the previous week, USA TODAY analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University showed.
The data marks a worrying trend for public health officials as the country enters its fourth wave of cases, with an overall increase of almost 70% in the average number of daily cases last week compared to the previous week, according to the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention.
As the number of cases increases, the epidemics of greatest concern continue to occur in areas with low vaccination rates, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky told a press conference on Friday.
“It is becoming an unvaccinated pandemic,” Walensky added. The average number of hospitalizations and deaths has also increased over the past seven days, increasing by about 36% and 26%, respectively, according to the CDC.
Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, said four states accounted for more than 40% of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States last week, with 1 in 5 cases in Florida . Zients did not name the other three, but CDC data shows Arkansas, Missouri, Florida and Louisiana have the highest case rates per 100,000 people – each averaging more than 150 during of the last seven days.
Cases will continue to increase in the coming weeks and will be concentrated in unvaccinated communities, Zients said. “If you are not vaccinated, please get vaccinated now,” he added.
Also in the news:
►A senior official at the European Medicines Agency said a decision on whether to recommend Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for children is expected at the end of next week.
►Joining a growing list of medical centers across the country, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital will require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the hospital confirmed in an email Thursday.
►President Joe Biden has said he hopes to know in the coming days when the United States will lift COVID-19 travel restrictions across much of Europe.
►New cases of the coronavirus reached 1,308 in Tokyo on Thursday, a six-month high, as fears grow of a possible dramatic increase that could flood hospitals during the Olympics, which begin in eight days.
►At least 59 residents of a homeless shelter in northern California have tested positive for the coronavirus, half of whom have been vaccinated, health officials said.
Today’s numbers: The United States has recorded more than 33.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 608,300 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global totals: over 188.8 million cases and over 4 million deaths. More than 160.4 million Americans – 48.2% of the population – have been fully immunized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What we read: J & J’s COVID-19 vaccine comes with a rare nervous syndrome warning. Here’s what you need to know about it.
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Full COVID-19 vaccine approval may not arrive until January
COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said on Friday it could be another six months before they receive full approval for their vaccine.
In a press release, the companies said the Food and Drug Administration had granted their license application “priority review.” By law, the deadline for such a decision is January 2022.
COVID-19 vaccines have been available since last December, but provided under an “emergency use authorization” rather than a full drug license.
Their application, initially filed in May, asks for a full license to use the vaccine in people aged 16 and over. Although their vaccine, BNT162b2, is currently licensed for ages 12 and older, the companies do not have the full six months of additional data for younger adolescents.
The Food and Drug Administration said their previous vaccine analysis was thorough, but due to the urgency of the pandemic, it authorized the vaccines on an emergency basis, with just two months of data instead of the six usually required.
“The FDA recognizes that vaccines are essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and is working as quickly as possible to review requests for full approval,” the agency said in a statement this week.
– Karen Weintraub
University of California will require vaccines
The University of California said Thursday that COVID-19 vaccinations will be needed before the start of the fall term for all students and faculty, as cases increase in the state.
“Vaccination is by far the most effective way to prevent serious illness and death after exposure to the virus and to reduce the spread of the disease to those who are not able, or not yet eligible, to receive the vaccine.” UC President Michael V. Drake said in a letter to the 10 chancellors of the system, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The announcement makes it the largest university system to mandate vaccinations. Previously, they had offered to mandate them only after the Food and Drug Administration had fully approved a vaccine.
College students pose a high risk to pandemic control efforts. Last September, counties with universities suffered many of the nation’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks. At the end of May, 400 colleges and universities plan to require vaccines for students.
The announcement also comes as several counties in California have reported an increase in cases. Los Angeles County reported 1,000 cases per day for most of the week, and San Diego County reported 2,000 cases for the entire week.
The fourth wave of COVID is here. Will the United States escape the fate of the United Kingdom?
A doubling of COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks suggests the United States has entered a fourth wave of the pandemic.
No one knows what the next month or two will bring, but the UK example suggests the infection rate could become quite high, while hospitalizations and deaths remain relatively low.
Instead of the virus raging through entire communities, it should target the unvaccinated, including children, and if rates are high enough, also the most vulnerable of those vaccinated – the elderly and the immunocompromised.
Dr David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said it was “unlikely” to see a return of COVID to levels recorded in January. But major epidemics can still occur, especially in areas with low vaccination rates.
“We are going to live in two pandemic worlds, the vaccinated world and the unvaccinated world,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, chief of infectious diseases at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston.
– Karen Weintraub
Idaho Capitol protesters fight hospitals’ COVID-19 vaccine warrants
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Idaho Capitol on Thursday to oppose vaccination warrants for COVID-19 employees in a few state health systems.
Kayla Dunn, organizer of the Stop the Mandate Idaho Rally Thursday, said the protest “was not an argument over whether the ‘vaccine is good or bad’,” but a demand for bodily autonomy, according to the Idaho Statesman .
“Make no mistake, evidence-based practice shows us that vaccinations work,” said another nurse. “But that should never, ever be forced on (us), especially since there haven’t been long-term studies.”
Saint Alphonse and Saint-Luc, two of Idaho’s largest healthcare systems, both announced in early July that they would require COVID-19 vaccinations for all staff. Both hospitals said they would allow exemptions for people with religious objections or health problems; however, employees who do not meet the exemption criteria could be terminated if they do not get the vaccine.
– Edouard Segarra
Los Angeles County to Require Indoor Masks – Regardless of COVID-19 Vaccination Status
Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, will once again require people to wear masks indoors – regardless of their vaccination status – due to a recent increase in the number of new cases of COVID-19.
The surprising change, announced exactly one month after California became one of the last in the country to reopen and drop coronavirus mandates, aims to slow a slight increase in new cases combined with the spread of the highly infectious delta variant . It will come into effect on Saturday at 11:59 p.m.
“It’s a time when all stakeholders are on deck,” county health official Dr Muntu Davis said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon.
WHO asks China to provide access to raw data on origins
The head of the World Health Organization says he hopes for better cooperation and better access to data from China in the search for the origins of the coronavirus.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said accessing raw data had been a challenge for the team of international experts who visited China this year to investigate the cause of the outbreak, which was first reported in Wuhan.
Tedros says the Geneva-based body “is actually asking China to be transparent, open and to cooperate, especially on the information, the raw data that we requested at the start of the pandemic.”
He also says there had been a “premature push” to dismiss the theory that the coronavirus may have escaped from a Chinese government laboratory in Wuhan.
“I myself was a lab technician, I am an immunologist and I worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen,” he said. “It’s common. Checking out what happened, especially in our laboratories, is important and we need information, direct information about the situation in this laboratory before and at the start of the pandemic, then, if we get complete information, we can exclude it. “
Tedros says the world owed the millions of dead “to know what happened and prevent the same crisis from happening again. And that is why we need cooperation.
Contribution: The Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CDC Director Says Unvaccinated People Most Affected by COVID Pandemic
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