July 20, 2021 – The nation’s top health officials said Tuesday that the Delta variant of the coronavirus is racing through the country and is now responsible for 83% of all US cases.
That’s a massive increase from a week ago when Delta was blamed for only more than half of the 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 vaccinations are the most powerful tool we have,” she said.
Meanwhile, several states in the south are reporting sharp spikes in COVID-19 cases, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Dr. Fauci tells Senators that the best way to combat the spreading Delta variant is to vaccinate as many people in the United States as possible. “We have the tools to end this epidemic.” pic.twitter.com/gl4wBMgKQB
– Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) July 20, 2021
Arkansas, Florida, and Missouri report full-fledged outbreaks, and neighboring states like Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas follow.
“The fourth wave is here,” wrote Thomas Dobbs, MD, the Mississippi State Health Commissioner, on Twitter on Monday.
Dobbs released a graph of Mississippi hospital admissions showing a dramatic increase in the numbers in July after bottoming out in May and June.
“Very sad indeed,” he wrote. “Didn’t have to be like that.”
Mississippi reported more than 2,300 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend, which is the 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 largest COVID-19 hotspots in the country and now accounts for a fifth of new infections in the United States, according to NBC News.
In Jacksonville, UF Health broke its record for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, increasing from 86 patients on Sunday to 126 on Monday.
“We’re winning cases so quickly that we don’t really know where to stop,” Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention at UF Health, told NBC News.
“We don’t even think about it for a few months,” he said. “We’re thinking about what will happen immediately in the next week.”
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