The director of the National Institutes of Health predicted the US may soon see more than 200,000 new cases of Covid-19 every day as the Delta variant spreads at a rapid pace, particularly among unvaccinated people. “I will be surprised if we don’t cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks, and that’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in that space again,” said Dr. Francis Collins.
“That was January, February, that shouldn’t be August. But here we are with the Delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated, who are sitting ducks for this virus, and that’s the mess we’re in.”
That 200,000 mark is still in the future. As of Saturday, the US has averaged about 129,000 daily new cases over the last 7 days, a number that has risen every day since July 5, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The country last averaged over 200,000 cases per day in January, before the Covid-19 vaccines were widely available.
Then as now, the alarming COVID Delta variant uptick has pushed health resources to their limits as many hospitals struggle to meet the demand of those who need crucial medical care.
“The system is breaking,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “It’s not just the beds. Many hospitals can find beds in places like parking structures or cafeterias. But it’s qualified people to staff those beds. And the United States is critically short on ICU nurses, so finding the qualified staff to take care of critically ill patients becomes increasingly hard,” said Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.
This surge has hit younger populations particularly because older people have much higher vaccination rates. Over 90% of people 65 and older have had at least one shot..
The rate of new hospitalizations among people in their 30s increased by nearly 300% over the past month, according to an analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New Covid-19 hospital admissions among people in their 30s are now the highest since the pandemic began, according to the data.
Health experts continue to say the solution is to vaccinate as many people as possible, because the vaccines provide good protection against severe disease. As of Sunday, 50.7% of the US population was fully vaccinated.
CDC data shows that’s 59.3% of those eligible to receive a vaccination. “We are going to have to continue to get people vaccinated so that right now, even in states in which you have a good relative proportion of people vaccinated, you have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinating,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
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