As the United States hit President Joe Biden’s 70 percent vaccination goal Monday, we learned a large chunk of recent COVID-19 cases are concentrated to Florida and Texas. The video above shows long testing lines in Florida, as well as clips from Monday’s White House COVID response team briefing.
“Just today, we hit 70 percent of adults with at least one shot, including 90 percent of seniors with at least one shot,” White House Coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said. “These are significant milestones in our fight against the virus.”
That original deadline for the 70 percent goal was July 4. 70 percent was the low end of initial government estimates for what would be necessary to achieve herd immunity. However, the number has been rendered obsolete by the Delta variant.
The U.S. still has not hit the administration’s other goal of fully vaccinating 165 million American adults by July 4.
The variant is a major factor in a rise in cases across the country. New cases per day have increased sixfold over the past month to an average of nearly 80,000. That hasn’t been seen since mid-February. Deaths per day have climbed over the past two weeks from an average of 259 to 360.
Low-vaccinated states are seeing the worst of it.
“In fact, the seven states with the lowest vaccination rates represent just about 8.5 percent of the U.S. population but account for more than 17 percent of cases,” Zients said. “And one in three cases nationwide occurred in Florida and Texas this past week.”
Florida is now leading the nation in per capita hospitalizations for COVID-19. The state has a record 11,515 COVID-19 hospitalizations, compared to about 1,000 six weeks ago.
But with a rise in cases in parts of the country, we’re also seeing a rise in vaccinations.
“It’s very important to note in the states with the highest case rates, daily vaccination rates have more than doubled,” Zients said. “The eight states with the highest current case rates have seen an average increase of 171% in the number of people newly vaccinated each day over the past three weeks.”