Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are back on the rise in the U.S. as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads across the country.

"A pandemic of the unvaccinated"

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2021-07-20 13:30:09

Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are back on the rise in the U.S. as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads across the country.

The big picture: This is happening almost exclusively to people who aren’t vaccinated, and it’s worse in places where overall vaccination rates are low.

By the numbers: The U.S. is now averaging about 26,000 new cases per day — up 70% from the previous week, Walensky said. Hospitalizations are up 36%, and deaths are up 26%, to an average of 211 per day.

That is enough vaccinations to avoid another wave as bad as the worst of the pandemic, when the U.S. was averaging more than 3,000 deaths per day. But it is still low enough that another wave of illness death, largely confined to the unvaccinated, is still very much a possibility.

Driving the news: Vaccinations in the U.S. have plateaued just as the Delta variant has become the dominant strain of the virus here and around the world.