Twenty-four states have seen an uptick of at least 10% in Covid-19 cases over the past week as health experts and the federal government keep pressing for more people to get vaccinated.
CNN — Twenty-four states have seen an uptick of at least 10% in Covid-19 cases over the past week as health experts and the federal government keep pressing for more people to get vaccinated. The rapid spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has only ratcheted up the pressure. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that the variant, first identified in India, has accounted for more than half of all new Covid-19 infections in the country. “We should think about the Delta variant as the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,” Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser to Joe Biden’s Covid Response Team, told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s twice as infectious. Fortunately, unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the Delta variant in its tracks: It’s called vaccine.” For fully vaccinated people, the variant “presents very little threat to you, very unlikely that you’re gonna get sick,” he explained. In North Carolina, COVID cases increased by 630 in the past 24 hours on Thursday – that’s the greatest increase in a single day since the beginning of June. That brings our state’s average new cases 41% higher than it was just two weeks ago on Jnue 24. It takes our average new cases to 415, the first time we’ve been above 400 since June 15, 23 days ago. Updates from NC officials suggest this sudden increase is at least partially due to the appearance and spread of the delta variant. Experts have said full approval for vaccines from the US Food and Drug Administration could encourage more people to get vaccinated. The current vaccines distributed in the US are authorized for emergency use only. On Tuesday. Slavitt said full approval for the Pfizer vaccine could come as early as this month.
