COVID 19 Tech

Pandemic of unvaccinated rages with delta’s spread; cases up in all 50 states

Anthony Church says goodbye through glass windows to his daughter, who is recovering from COVID-19 at Johnston Memorial Hospital's ICU on June 16, 2021, in Abingdon, Va.

Enlarge / Anthony Church says goodbye through glass windows to his daughter, who is recovering from COVID-19 at Johnston Memorial Hospital’s ICU on June 16, 2021, in Abingdon, Va. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post)

With the rapid rise of the highly transmissible delta variant and national vaccination efforts largely stalled, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage among the unvaccinated in the US—and things are looking grim.

Cases of COVID-19 are rising in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Right now, the states with the highest averages for daily new cases per 100,000 people are Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Louisiana, and Nevada, which all have below-average vaccination rates. Nationwide, average daily cases are up 140 percent over the past two weeks. Hospitalizations and deaths, which lag behind increases in cases by weeks, are also up 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

Relative to the rest of the pandemic, the nationwide numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are low—they’re matching or are below numbers seen back in April of 2020. But rates of cases among the unvaccinated in some places rival those seen at the heights of the pandemic. And areas with low vaccination coverage are seeing surges.

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