Covid cases rise to 32,000 a day as Delta variant sweeps through US

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Cases and hospitalisations from the Delta variant are rising in the United States as Covid infections reach figures not seen for almost two months.

Over 40,000 Covid infections were reported on Friday for the whole of the US, and following the weekend, the current weekly average for daily infections is at 32,000 a day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

It represents a 66 per cent rise on the week before, and a 145 per cent increase from a fortnight ago, when it was around 15,000 a day, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It last reached 32,000 in mid-May, before a low of roughly 11,000 infections a day was reached by mid-June before slowly rising again.

Analysts believe that the introduction of the Delta variant to the US, and a slowdown in the country’s vaccination roll-out in recent weeks, are behind the increases.

According to figures from the US department of health, hospitalisations are also higher, with a 26 per cent rise on last week and a 50 per cent increase from two weeks ago, from Covid. On Monday, total 24,923 were in hospital with the virus.

For deaths, the weekly average has also risen, and, as CNN reported, was at 289 Covid deaths a day last week. That is 13 per cent higher than the week before, and was last seen in mid-June, according to CDC figures.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said on Friday that it was “becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated”, with a majority of rising infections and hospitalisations among those without protection from the virus, and the infectious Delta variant.

It is now the dominant form of the virus in the country, the CDC said earlier this month.