US : The US remains among nations with the highest rate of new Covid-19 cases, driven by a surge in the South, where many states are lagging in getting people vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“This is starting to look really ominous in the South, rates of transmission in Florida and Louisiana, they’re actually probably the highest in the world,” Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Infection rates began to plummet in the US in the spring as vaccines became widely available.
The US has so far reported more than 1.5 million new cases of Covid-19, more than three times the numbers for Iran and India , which now hold second and third place, JHU data shows. And the seven-day average has topped more than 135,000 cases, well ahead of other nations.
There is a screaming level of transmission across the southern states right now. And now we’re starting to see this happening among younger age groups,” Hotez said.
Florida on Friday broke its own record high in Covid-19 cases over the past week, reporting 151,415 new cases — the most infections recorded during a seven-day period since the pandemic upended lives across the globe.
