COVID cases are rising steeply throughout the southeastern US

We are well into year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, which officially began on March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the viral outbreak a global event. That came just two months after WHO announced on January 5, 2020, that there was a mysterious virus emerging in Wuhan, China. Since then, more than 620,000 Americans have died from the virus.

Today, the state of the pandemic looks far different than it did even a few months ago. We now have a handful of vaccines to prevent the infection, and more than 60 percent of US adults have completed their vaccination regimens. But it’s still crucial that we maintain our awareness of the severity of this crisis. Here’s a quick overview of the most recent essential stats and figures.

Current US vaccination numbers

The number of daily vaccines administered had plateaued at around half a million doses toward the end of July, but are slowly on the rise again. On August 16, the seven-day average of vaccines administered was up about 7 percent from the previous week, to about 765,000 doses per day nationwide. Still, that’s 77 percent lower than when vaccinations peaked on April 13, at 3.38 million doses per day.

More than 60 percent of US adults are now fully vaccinated, and 60 percent of the entire population has now received at least one dose.

On May 4, President Biden set a goal of having 70 percent of American adults with at least one vaccine shot by July 4. The US reached the benchmark about one month late. And that number has barely crept up in the last week: Currently just 72 percent of all adults nationally have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, though vaccination rates still vary widely by state and region.

These are the top five states for percentage of total population with at least one dose:

1. Vermont at 75 percent
2. Massachusetts at 74 percent
3. Hawaii at 73 percent
4. Connecticut at 72 percent
5. Maine at 70 percent

Every state has reached a rate of at least 35 percent complete vaccination, with Vermont leading the way at 67 percent and Alabama and Mississippi tied last at 36 percent.

Latest US COVID-19 case counts

The United States has now reported more than 36.9 million cases in total, and there were 141,365 new daily cases on average as of August 16, which is up 64 percent over the last two weeks. In the past month, the average number of new cases per day has more than tripled. Case numbers had drastically declined from our third—and by far largest—peak so far, reaching a pandemic low for much of June. Although cases are still below January’s peak, they have been rising steeply since early July and are now on par with numbers from last November.

COVID-19 testing has continued to increase since mid-July, although the testing rates remain lower than they were over the winter when reported case counts were similar. This means that case numbers may not be directly comparable to the winter counts. National positivity rates had fallen along with case counts in the spring and earlier summer, but are trending back up as the Delta variant remains dominant.

The CDC reports that an average of more than 10 percent of tests nationally have been positive this week.