July 20, 2021 — The nation’s top health officials said Tuesday that the Delta variant of the coronavirus is racing through the country and now is responsible for 83% of all U.S. cases.
That’s a massive increase from a week ago, when Delta was seen as responsible for just more than half of new cases, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, told a Senate committee.
“The best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 variants is to prevent the spread of disease, and vaccination is the most powerful tool we have,” she said.
Meanwhile, several states in the South are reporting a large increase in COVID-19 cases, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Arkansas, Florida, and Missouri are reporting full-fledged outbreaks, and neighboring states such as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas are following behind.
“4th wave is here,” Thomas Dobbs, MD, the state health officer for Mississippi, wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Dobbs posted a graph of hospitalizations in Mississippi, which showed numbers climbing dramatically in July after hitting a low in May and June.
“Very sad indeed,” he wrote. “Didn’t have to be this way.”
Mississippi reported more than 2,300 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend, which is the state’s largest 3-day increase in cases since February, according to The Associated Press. Mississippi has one of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the country.
Florida has become one of the country’s biggest COVID-19 hot spots, now accounting for a fifth of new infections in the U.S., according to NBC News.
In Jacksonville, UF Health broke its record for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, jumping from 86 patients on Sunday to 126 on Monday.
“We’re gaining cases at such a rapid rate, we don’t really know where it’s going to stop,” Chad Neilsen, the director of infection prevention at UF Health, told NBC News.
“We aren’t even thinking a couple of months,” he said. “We’re thinking what’s going to immediately happen in the next week.”
function pixelForFacebook(){var e,t,i,n,r,c;e=window,t=document,i=”script”,e.fbq||(n=e.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)},e._fbq||(e._fbq=n),(n.push=n).loaded=!0,n.version=”2.0″,n.queue=[],(r=t.createElement(i)).async=!0,r.src=”https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js”,(c=t.getElementsByTagName(i)[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(r,c)),fbq(“init”,”428750600651790″),fbq(“track”,”PageView”),fbq(“track”,”Topic_id”,{topicid:window.s_topic}),fbq(“track”,”Audience”,{audience:getAudience()})}function pixelForTwitter(){var e,t,i,n,r,c;e=window,t=document,i=”script”,e.twq||((n=e.twq=function(){n.exe?n.exe.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}).version=”1.1″,n.queue=[],(r=t.createElement(i)).async=!0,r.src=”https://static.ads-twitter.com/uwt.js”,(c=t.getElementsByTagName(i)[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(r,c)),twq(“init”,”nxo3v”),twq(“track”,”PageView”)}function pixelForPinterest(){!function(e){if(!window.pintrk){window.pintrk=function(){window.pintrk.queue.push(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments))};var t=window.pintrk;t.queue=[],t.version=”3.0″;var i=document.createElement(“script”);i.async=!0,i.src=”https://s.pinimg.com/ct/core.js”;var n=document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];n.parentNode.insertBefore(i,n)}}(),pintrk(“load”,”2618142259440″),pintrk(“page”),pintrk(“track”,”pagevisit”)}function pixelForReddit(){!function(e,t){if(!e.rdt){var i=e.rdt=function(){i.sendEvent?i.sendEvent.apply(i,arguments):i.callQueue.push(arguments)};i.callQueue=[];var n=t.createElement(“script”);n.src=”https://www.redditstatic.com/ads/pixel.js”,n.async=!0;var r=t.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];r.parentNode.insertBefore(n,r)}}(window,document),rdt(“init”,”t2_109a14pl”),rdt(“track”,”PageVisit”)}function getAudience(){if(webmd.cookie.get(“cmt”))return[“campaigns”].reduce(function(e,t){return e[t]=JSON.parse(webmd.cookie.get(“cmt”))[t],e},{})}!function(){var e;window.s_topic&&(e=s_topic.match(/^7ddd/gi)),window.s_topic&&!e&&-1===[“1634″,”1663″,”1664″,”1669″,”1695″,”1700″,”1703″,”1705″,”1707″,”1709″,”1711″,”1719″,”1756″,”1760″,”1761″,”1762″,”1783″,”1814″,”1818″,”1819″,”1835″,”1840″,”2730″,”2756″,”2857″,”2950″,”2952″,”2953″,”3079″,”3236″,”3539″,”3540″,”3541″,”3552″,”3571″,”3607″,”3608″,”3623″,”3631″,”3637″,”3644″,”3838″,”3927″,”3928″,”3930″,”3937″,”3939″,”3950″,”3951″,”3954″,”3958″,”3962″,”3963″,”3965″,”3966″,”3971″,”3989″,”4010″,”4048″,”4049″,”4050″,”4052″,”4058″,”4099″,”4119″,”4121″,”4140″,”4203″,”4222″,”4227″,”4228″,”4236″,”4242″,”4251″,”4254″,”4257″,”5555″,”6041″,”18091″,”18092″,”18093″,”18094”].indexOf(window.s_topic)&&(pixelForFacebook(),pixelForTwitter(),pixelForPinterest(),pixelForReddit())}()