With the highly transmissible delta variant and low vaccination rates in the South, the COVID-19 outbreak has now reached 100,000 daily confirmed infections.
Health officials fear an increase in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths if more Americans refuse the vaccine. Over half of Americans are fully vaccinated, and over 70% of adults have received at least one dose.
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“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,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky.
Averaging 100,000 cases per day in November, the US reached a peak of around 250,000 in early January. The US reported 11,000 infections per day in June but now stand at 107,143.
Hospitalizations and deaths are also rising, but remain below early-year peaks before vaccines became widely available. The CDC reports that over 44,000 Americans are now hospitalized with COVID-19, up 30% in a week and nearly four times the number in June. In January, over 120,000 were hospitalised.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day average of deaths increased from 270 two weeks ago to nearly 500 on Friday. In January, 3,500 people died daily. Deaths usually follow hospitalizations by a few weeks.
The situation is particularly dire in the South, where low vaccination rates have resulted in overcrowding in smaller hospitals.
The CDC reports a 50% increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Southeast last week, from 11,600 to 17,600. They account for twice as many new hospitalizations as their population.
According to the Mayo Clinic, less than 35% of residents of Alabama and Mississippi are fully vaccinated. Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas all rank 15th.
According to State Health Officer Scott Harris, over 65,000 doses went unused in Alabama due to lack of takers. That’s less than 1% of the 5 million coronavirus vaccine doses Alabama has received.
“Sixty-five thousand doses have been wasted. That’s extremely unfortunate when we have such a low vaccination rate and of course, there are so many people in the world that still don’t have access to vaccine,” Harris said.
Florida has also been hit hard. It accounts for over 20% of new cases and hospitalizations, triple its population share. The state’s vaccination rate is 49%, while many rural counties are below 40%. Saturday, the state reported 23,903 new cases.
Gov. Ron DeSantis supports vaccinations but opposes mask laws and other restrictions. He is up for re-election next year and may run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. DeSantis has accused Obama of overreaching, while Biden has advised DeSantis to “get out of the way” of local officials.
False social media warnings and non-medical media personalities have scared some people away from the vaccine.
Doctors and public health officials have almost universally advised people to get vaccinated, but Yoiris Duran, 56, said her family was swayed by misinformation. She is now urging friends and family to get vaccinated after she, her husband, and their 25-year-old son fell ill with COVID-19.
“I don’t want people to go through what we have gone through,” she said in a video interview with Baptist Health Systems.
In some parts of the U.S., hospitals are scrambling to find beds for patients.
Dr Leonardo Alonso, an emergency room physician in Jacksonville, Florida, said some hospitals are sending COVID-19 patients home with oxygen and a monitor to free up beds for the sicker.
“The ICUs, the hospitals are all on a near what we call mass casualty incident. They’re almost at protocols where they’re overflowing,” Alonso said.
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Officials in Houston said some patients were sent as far as North Dakota.
Houston’s chief medical officer Dr David Persse, said some ambulances waited hours to offload patients because no beds were available. Persse said he feared this would lead to prolonged response times to 911 medical calls.
“The health care system right now is nearly at a breaking point. … For the next three weeks or so, I see no relief on what’s happening in emergency departments,” Persse said Thursday.
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