Coronavirus infection rates are rising in 24 US states despite the success of the US government’s vaccination programme, with an average of three million doses a day being administered.
The race between the vaccine and the virus is facing hurdles, with the aggressive B117, or Kent, variant having become the dominant strain in the US and higher rates of younger people and children now being infected.
In Michigan the number of cases has quadrupled in the past month and hospitals are at 92 per cent occupancy. “We are very worried. The last time we saw numbers like this was April 2020,” Dr Adnan Munkarah, chief clinical officer at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, said.
Florida, the nation’s worst hot spot, recorded 7,939 new cases on Thursday — its biggest daily increase in infections in nearly two months, just ahead of Michigan’s 7,800. Nearly 20 per cent of the country’s adult population is fully vaccinated.
Health officials attribute the rise in patients to a combination of the heightened transmissibility of B117 and attention to safety being relaxed prematurely. The spring break and Easter also brought increased travel.
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Older generations may also be celebrating immunity by gathering younger, unvaccinated friends and family around them, despite B117 being twice as transmissible and potentially 64 per cent more deadly than other strains. The P1 variant that originated in Brazil has also been recorded in three states.
During the past week the country has recorded an average of about 65,000 new cases a day, maintaining a plateau that some health officials warn may become a fourth national surge. On Thursday alone the daily total topped 80,000.
“It’s kind of a race between the vaccine and the possibility that there’ll be another surge,” Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said.
Michigan is pressing the federal government to bend its vaccine strategy and flood the state with extra doses — a call the Biden administration has not yet answered, as it allocates doses based on population and not caseloads.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, signed an order last week banning state and local authorities from issuing proof-of-vaccination documents and prohibiting businesses from requiring customers to show them. So-called vaccine passports would “reduce individual freedom” and create two classes of citizens, his order stated.
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The move has complicated hopes by venues and businesses of a return to normal in the coming months — a reopening that DeSantis has been pushing. Cruise lines had factored in a requirement for vaccine passports as they seek to reopen, to meet federal government requirements. Now DeSantis is suing the Biden administration to allow Florida’s $9 billion cruise industry to set sail anyway, arguing that there is no basis for such precautions.
Covid-19 has killed at least 560,000 people and the coronavirus has infected 31 million in the US since January 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organisation, which measures figures differently, put the total slightly lower, at 553,801 deaths and 30,615,849 infections.