95 percent of US counties now seeing ‘high’ COVID-19 transmission rate: CDC data

More than 95 percent of U.S. counties are now seeing “high” rates of COVID-19 transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC’s COVID Data Tracker revealed on Tuesday that 95.19 percent of counties in the U.S. are seeing “high” rates of transmission, meaning there were at least 100 new cases reported per 100,000 people in the past seven days.

Around 2 percent of counties are seeing “substantial” and “low” rates of transmission, and less than 1 percent of counties are seeing “moderate” rates of transmission.

The U.S. is seeing a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, driven largely by the highly infectious delta variant, which is more contagious than previous versions of the virus.

Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on Sunday that the delta variant is “over 99 percent dominant.”

The U.S. surpassed 40 million COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, according to data from the CDC. More than 647,000 people in the U.S. have died since the beginning of the pandemic.

The majority of recent COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, however, have been among unvaccinated individuals, further bolstering evidence that the shots are effective against severe illness.

Seventy-five percent of adults in the U.S. are now at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, a milestone that was announced by a White House official on Tuesday.

More than 1.5 million shots were administered between Sunday and Tuesday, according to Cyrus Shahpar, the White House’s COVID-19 data director, which lifted U.S. adults above the 75 percent benchmark.

Sunday-Tuesday just in: +1.51M doses reported administered over Saturday’s total, including 681K newly vaccinated and 105K additional doses. As usual, lower reporting over the holiday weekend. Just hit 75% of adults with at least one dose!

— Cyrus Shahpar (@cyrusshahpar46) September 7, 2021