US Covid hospitalisations hit 8-month high

Washington, Aug. 27: The number of people hospitalised with Covid-19 in the US has risen above

1,00,000 for the first time since January, when the mass vaccination campaign was just getting under way.

Figures from the US Department of Health and Human Services show that

1,00,317 inpatient hospital beds are now occupied by Covid patients.

The return to January levels of hospitalisations underscores the devastating surge of infection from the highly contagious Delta variant of Coronavirus which is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated people, especially in the US south.

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights the mortal danger that unvaccinated Americans are now facing. It shows that people without the vaccine are about 29 times more likely to end up in hospital with Covid than those who are fully vaccinated.

Unvaccinated people are

also almost five times as likely to become infected as those who get the shots, the study found, basing its conclusions on data from Los Angeles county in California.

Hospitalisations are particularly high in Texas and Florida. This week the death rate in Florida was higher than it has ever been throughout the pandemic. According to the New York Times database the state is suffering a seven-day average of 228 new reported deaths,

which is substantially worse than its two previous peaks in August 2020 and January this year.

The rising death rate brings Florida’s total death toll to 42,731. The state reported 26,203 new Covid cases to the CDC on Wednesday, the Miami Herald reported.

The full wrath of the surge in cases is being felt in a relatively small number of states in the south, where vaccination rates are relatively low compared with other parts of the country. Alabama has run out of ICU beds as its hospital capacity failed to meet the rise in seriously ill Covid patients.

Nationally, 52% of the US population is now fully vaccinated, but that rate falls to 46% in Alabama – the lowest in the country.

A mere 12% of all hospital patients in the state have had the Covid vaccine. US deaths are running at more than 1,100 a day, the highest level since mid-March, and new cases per day are averaging over 1,52,000.

Texas and Kentucky have also reported more

Covid-19 patients in their hospitals than an any other time since the pandemic began. At least five other states, Arkansas, Louisiana, Hawaii, Mississippi and Oregon, have already broken their hospitalisation records.

Delta Airlines has said it will impose fees of $200 a month on employees who fail to get vaccinated, to cover extra costs.