More than 100,000 people are currently hospitalised with Covid-19 in the US for the first time since January, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, as the nation fails to get a grip on the highly contagious Delta variant.
The southern states are suffering the most as vaccine resistance fuels the uptick. Every state in the south has a higher per capita rate of Covid than the national average.
Florida is the epicentre of the US pandemic, it became the first state to have higher death rates from Covid than any other stage in the pandemic, and currently has 17,000 hospital beds occupied. Texas is the second on the list for people hospitalised, with 14,000 people occupying ICU beds. Meanwhile, Alabama has completely run out of ICU beds.
People who don’t take the coronavirus jab are around 29 times more likely to end up in hospital with from the disease, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found.
Younger patients “with very few if any medical problems,” are now dying from Covid-19, Chirag Patel, an assistant chief medical officer in Jacksonville told the New York Times. “They simply come in with Covid, and they don’t make it out of the hospital.”
Fifty-two per cent of the US population is now fully vaccinated against Covid-19, in Alabama that figure drops to 37 per cent, according to New York Times data.
Preventative measures against Covid have also remained unpopular among southern lawmakers.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has taken a hostile stance to mask-wearing, issuing an executive order in the state in July prohibiting mask mandates in schools.
“The federal government has no right to tell parents that in order for their kids to attend school in person, they must be forced to wear a mask all day, every day,” said Mr DeSantis.
“We know that masks are a simple and effective way to help prevent virus spread, and from a medical perspective it makes absolutely zero sense to discourage their use,” Dr Bernard Ashby, head of Florida’s progressive Committee to Protect Health Care, told the Associated Press.
