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FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida – The COVID-19 outbreak in the United States crossed 100,000 new confirmed daily infections on Saturday, a milestone last exceeded in the winter wave and driven by the highly transmissible delta variant and low vaccination rates in the South.
Health officials fear that cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to rise if more Americans do not adopt the vaccine. Nationally, 50% of residents are fully immunized and more than 70% of adults have received at least one dose.
“Our models show that if we don’t (vaccinate people) we could be up to several hundred thousand cases per day, similar to our increase in early January,” said the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. , Rochelle Walensky, on CNN this week. .
It took about nine months for the United States to cross 100,000 average daily cases in November before peaking at around 250,000 in early January. Cases hit their lowest point in June, averaging around 11,000 a day, but six weeks later the number is 107,143.
Hospitalizations and deaths are also increasing, though all are still below peaks seen earlier this year before vaccines became widely available. More than 44,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the CDC, up 30% in one week and nearly four times more than in June. More than 120,000 were hospitalized in January.
The seven-day average of deaths fell from around 270 deaths a day two weeks ago to nearly 500 a day on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Deaths peaked at 3,500 per day in January. Deaths usually lag behind hospitalizations, as the disease normally takes a few weeks to kill.
The situation is particularly dire in the South, which has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the United States and has seen smaller hospitals overflowing with patients.
In the Southeast, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients jumped 50% to a daily average of 17,600 over the past week from 11,600 the week before, according to the CDC. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky account for 41% of the country’s new hospitalizations, according to the CDC, double their overall share of the population.
Alabama and Mississippi have the lowest vaccination rates in the country: less than 35% of residents are fully vaccinated, according to the Mayo Clinic. Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas are all in the 15 lowest states.
Alabama has seen more than 65,000 wasted doses because health providers couldn’t find people to take them before they expired, according to state health official Scott Harris. That’s less than 1.5% of the more than 5 million doses of coronavirus vaccine Alabama has received.
“Sixty-five thousand doses have been wasted. It’s extremely unfortunate when we have such a low immunization rate and of course there are so many people in the world who still don’t have access to the vaccine, ”Harris said.
Florida has been particularly affected. It represents more than 20% of new cases and hospitalizations in the country, or three times its share of the population. Many rural counties have vaccination rates below 40%, with the state at 49%. The state again set a record on Saturday, reporting 23,903 new cases.
Governor Ron DeSantis, while encouraging vaccinations, has taken a hard line against mask rules and other restrictions. Running for re-election next year and considering a 2024 Republican presidential bid, he and President Joe Biden have clashed verbally in recent days. DeSantis accused the Democratic president of going too far, while Biden said DeSantis would have to “step aside” from local officials if he is not to tackle the outbreak.
Some people have been scared of the vaccine by false warnings on social media and by some non-medical media figures.
Miami-area real estate agent Yoiris Duran, 56, said his family is swayed by misinformation, although doctors and public health officials have almost universally encouraged people to get vaccinated. After she, her husband and 25-year-old son fell seriously ill with COVID-19 and were hospitalized, she is now encouraging friends and family to get vaccinated.
“I don’t want people going through what we’ve been through,” she said in a video interview with Baptist Health Systems.
In some areas of the United States, hospitals are scrambling to find beds for patients.
Dr Leonardo Alonso, who works in several emergency rooms in Jacksonville, one of the hardest-hit areas in Florida, said some hospitals were sending COVID-19 patients home with oxygen and a monitor to free up beds for sicker people.
“The intensive care units, the hospitals are all on a near miss that we call a large number of casualties. They are almost at protocols where they are overflowing, ”Alonso said.
In Texas, officials in Houston said some patients had been transferred out of town – one to North Dakota.
Houston chief medical officer Dr David Persse said some ambulances waited hours to unload patients because no beds were available. Persse said he was concerned this could lead to extended response times to 911 medical calls.
“The health care system right now is almost at a breaking point. … For the next three weeks or so, I don’t see any relief over what’s going on in the emergency department, ”Persse said Thursday.
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