The cumulative total of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States surpassed 35.73 million as of Saturday, with the death toll reaching 616 712, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
Specifically, the country’s case count rose to 35 731 175 as of 19:21 Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Saturday, the CSSE tally showed.
The United States had administered 349 531 913 vaccine doses, said the CSSE.
As the coronavirus is currently raging throughout the United States, the number of cases, based on a seven-day moving average reached 107 143, up by nearly 10 times compared with the data registered just weeks ago in June.
The current seven-day average of new hospital admissions and new deaths have also witnessed a rapid increase, with an average of near 500 killed each day over the past seven days, up for 100 percent compared with two weeks ago, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As of Friday, 50 percent of the US population – more than 165.9 million people – had been fully vaccinated against the virus, according to the data updated by CDC on its website.
With the much more contagious Delta variant raging, 40 percent of the US population who have not yet received any vaccination believe that the COVID-19 vaccine poses a greater threat to their health rather than the virus, a Yahoo News poll showed.
At the same time, 31 percent of others have no clue of which one, either the vaccine or the coronavirus, means better safety for them.
Some 29 percent of the unvaccinated U.S. citizens blame the vaccination as “riskier”, and up to 50 percent of the unvaccinated said they will never receive the vaccine.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 infections among children in the United States have been growing, especially in the southern state of Florida, one of the hardest-hit area in the country.
Infectious disease expert Dr Aileen Marty, from the Florida International University said the medics in the state’s children hospitals are “overwhelmed”, with the ward occupancy rate of pediatric patients reaching 116 percent in a local hospital.
