For the first time since January, the number of COVID cases in each of the 50 states is increasing as the Delta variant of coronavirus sweeps across the country as the number of vaccinated Americans plateaus and localities lift public health restrictions, CNN reports.
“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during Friday’s White House Covid-19 briefing. “We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk.” Meantime, “communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well.”
Analysis of data from The Johns Hopkins University by CNN shows that 38 states have experienced a 50% or greater jump in coronavirus cases within the last week. The average number of new cases went up 10% in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 48.9% of Americans have been fully vaccinated, with and additional 25 million Americans having received at one dose of one of the two-dose vaccines.
As cases increase, hospitals are beginning to see a surge in hospitalizations, stressing systems that saw a brief respite while public health regulations were in place to slow the spread of the virus. Previous analysis has shown that more than 98% of new cases were of unvaccinated people.