Covid-19 cases are on the rise again in the United States, where the Delta variant has become the dominant variant, according to data from US health officials on Wednesday.
The seven-day average number of new daily infections stood at just under 13,900 cases on Tuesday, compared to around 11,500 two weeks ago, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
Or an increase of more than 20%.
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And the effect of a long weekend that included a public holiday could even mitigate this increase for the moment, because of figures transmitted late by the local authorities. The Delta variant, which is more contagious than the others, now causes around 52% of cases, according to the CDC, the country's main federal public health agency. Despite doses of vaccines widely available to all, the US immunization campaign has slowed sharply after peaking in early April.
At present, just over 55% of the population, or nearly 183 million people, have received at least one dose of one of the three vaccines authorized in the country. Areas in the Midwest and South of the country have the lowest vaccination rates, compared to the Northeast and the US West Coast states where these rates are much higher. A Springfield, Missouri hospital ran out of ventilators to treat Covid-19 patients over the weekend, local media reported.
The pandemic will now have
"two different faces
" in the United States, Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told AFP. It will remain
"a problem in places with large numbers of unvaccinated people"
, but elsewhere
"it will be treated more like an ordinary respiratory virus".
Thus, in places with high vaccination rates, according to him, we will increasingly see a
"dissociation"
between the number of Covid-19 cases, and declining hospitalizations and deaths.