The U.S. had a one-day tally of more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, the highest single-day figure since February, in the latest sign that the pandemic is far from over.
The vast majority of new cases are in people who are not vaccinated, prompting public health experts to again push for more of that group to get their shots. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Sunday that more “pain and suffering” is ahead as long as cases keep climbing.
Fauci said he doesn’t foresee additional lockdowns in the U.S. because he believes enough people are vaccinated to avoid a recurrence of last winter, the Associated Press reported. At the same time, he said, not enough are inoculated to “crush the outbreak” at this point.
“So we’re looking, not, I believe, to lock down, but we’re looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we’re seeing the cases go up, which is the reason why we keep saying over and over again, the solution to this is get vaccinated, and this would not be happening,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Fauci’s warning comes just days after the CDC reversed its policy on face masks by saying even vaccinated people should wear them in public settings in areas with high rates of transmission. On Friday, it released the research that backed up that recommendation, based on a recent investigation of a coronavirus outbreak in Barnstable County in Massachusetts involving 469 cases of COVID-19. Of that number, 346, or 74%, occurred in fully vaccinated individuals, while testing identified the delta variant was dominant. While a handful of those individuals were hospitalized, none of them died.
States with high levels of transmission include Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida, according to a New York Times tracker. Things are so bad in the Sunshine State that it now has the highest level of hospitalized patients since the start of the pandemic, with 10,207 people in hospitals with confirmed COVID cases on Friday. The previous record was 10,170, recorded on July 23, 2020, the AP reported.
Florida is now leading the nation in per capita hospitalizations for COVID-19, as hospitals around the state report having to put emergency-room patients in beds in hallways and others document a noticeable drop in the age of patients. Florida has averaged 1,525 adult hospitalizations a day, and 35 daily pediatric hospitalizations in the last week.
Mary Mayhew, CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, told MSNBC that more than half of recent hospitalizations in the state are of people between 25 and 55 years old. At one hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., she said the average age of COVID in-patients is now 42.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted mask mandates and vaccine requirements and along with the state legislature has limited local officials’ ability to impose restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19. DeSantis on Friday barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks as classes resume. Florida has vaccinated 50.3% of its population, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, after a recent uptick.
Source: CDC
The CDC’s vaccine tracker, meanwhile, is showing that 164.8 million Americans are fully vaccinated, equal to 49.6% of the population. That means they have had two shots of the vaccines developed by Pfizer
PFE,
with German partner BioNTech
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or Moderna
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or one shot of Johnson & Johnson’s
JNJ,
one-dose regimen. The AstraZeneca
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vaccine, widely used the U.K. and other countries, has not been authorized for use in the U.S.
Among adults 18 and over, 60.5% are vaccinated, according to the tracker. The White House said early afternoon that one key milestone had been reached, that of getting 70% of the adult population have at least one dose. Biden was originally aiming to meet that goal by the July 4 holiday.
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Elsewhere, millions of Chinese people have been ordered to stay at home as officials work to contain a fresh outbreak of COVID cases driven by the delta variant, AFP reported. China recorded 55 new locally transmitted coronavirus cases on Monday, as an outbreak of the fast-spreading delta variant reached over 20 cities and more than a dozen provinces.
In Tokyo, currently hosting the Olympic Games, COVID cases have doubled in a week, news site Asahi.com reported. Tokyo recorded 3,058 new cases on Sunday, marking a fifth straight day with more than 3,000 cases. The rolling seven-day average of daily new cases stands at 3,105, up 113.6% from a week ago.
In the Philippines, Manila is extending a nighttime curfew and imposing strict curbs on movement as it struggles to contain a surge in delta cases, Reuters reported. Authorities have deployed police personnel to quarantine checkpoints in metropolitan Manila, where inbound and outbound travel will be restricted. COVID-19 cases in the Philippines exceeded 8,000 a day from Friday to Monday. Sunday’s recorded tally of 8,735 infections was the highest since May 28.
In Australia, troops have been deployed in Sydney to help enforce a lockdown as officials seek to rein in the outbreak there, with some 300 unarmed soldier set to start patrols in the city of 6 million, NPR reported. They will be knocking on doors to ensure that residents are following stay-at-home measures, the Australian broadcaster ABC reported.
Latest tallies
The global tally of the coronavirus-borne illness climbed above 198.4 million on Monday, while the death toll climbed above 4.22 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins. The U.S. leads the world with a total of 35 million cases and in deaths with 613,230.
India is second by cases at 31.7 million and third by deaths at 424,773 according to its official numbers, which are expected to be undercounted.
Brazil is second in deaths at 556,834, but is third in cases at 19.9 million. Mexico has the fourth highest death toll at 241,034 but has recorded just 2.9 million cases, according to its official numbers.
In Europe, Russia continues to pull ahead of the U.K. by deaths at 157,496, while the U.K. has 130,014, making Russia the country with the fifth highest death toll in the world and highest in Europe.
China, where the virus was first discovered late in 2019, has had 105,154 confirmed cases and 4,848 deaths, according to its official numbers, which are widely held to be massively underreported.
