The COVID-19 outbreak in the United States crossed 100,000 new confirmed daily infections Saturday, a milestone last exceeded during the winter surge and driven by the highly transmissible delta variant and low vaccination rates in the South.
The U.S. was averaging about 11,000 cases a day in late June. Now the number is 107,143.
It took the U.S. about nine months to cross the 100,000 average case number in November before peaking at about 250,000 in early January. Cases bottomed out at about 11,000 cases in June but took about six weeks to go back above 107,000.
Health officials fear that cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the vaccine. Nationwide, 50% of residents are fully vaccinated and more than 70% of adults have received at least one dose.
More than 44,000 Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up 30% in a week and nearly four times the number in June.
The seven-day average for deaths rose from about 270 per day two weeks ago to nearly 500 a day as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Deaths peaked at 3,500 per day in January. Deaths usually lag behind hospitalizations as the disease normally takes a few weeks to kill.
