US now averaging 100000 new COVID-19 infections a day

By TERRY SPENCER August 8, 2021 â€" 2.10am

The US is now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day, returning to a milestone last seen during the winter surge in another bleak reminder of how quickly the delta variant has spread through the country.

Health officials fear that cases, hospitalisations and deaths will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the COVID-19 vaccine. Nationwide, 50% of residents are fully vaccinated 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 a day, similar to our surge in early January,” Centres for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said on CNN this week.

It took the US about nine months to cross the 100,000 average case number in November before peaking at about 250,000 in early January. Cases bottomed out in June, averaging about 11,000 per day, but six weeks later the number is 107,143.

Hospitalisations and deaths are also increasing rapidly, though all are still below peaks seen early this year before vaccines became widely available. More than 44,000 Americans are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, according to the CDC, up 30% in a week and nearly four times the number who were hospitalised in June.

The seven-day average for deaths also increased, according to Johns Hopkins University. It rose from about 270 deaths per day two weeks ago to nearly 500 a day as of Friday. Deaths peaked at 3,500 per day in January. Deaths usually lag behind hospitalisations 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 US and has seen smaller hospitals overrun with patients.

Healthcare workers at a COVID-19 testing site in Florida as cases surge.Credit:

The Southeast has seen a more than 50% jump in number of hospitalised COVID patients â€" a daily average of 17,600 over the last week compared with 11,600 to the previous week, the CDC says. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky represent 41% of the nation’s new hospitalisations, the CDC says, twice their overall share of the population.

Alabama and Mississippi have the lowest vaccination rates in the country: less than 35% of residents are fully inoculated, according to the Mayo Clinic. Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas are all in the lowest 15 states.

Florida makes up more than 20% of the nation’s new cases and hospitalisations, triple its share of the population. Many rural counties have vaccination rates below 40%, with the state at 49%.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, while encouraging vaccinations, has said he will not impose statewide mask mandates or other measures. Running for re-election next year and eyeing a 2024 Republican presidential bid, he and President Joe Biden have verbally sparred in recent days. DeSantis has accused the Democratic president of wanting to steal Floridians’ “freedoms,” while Biden has said DeSantis should “get out of the way” of local officials if he doesn’t want to fight the outbreak.

AP

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