Health officials in Arizona on Sunday reported more than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases for the second consecutive day.
They say the 2,306 new cases and five additional deaths pushed the state’s totals to 929,541 cases and 18,251 known deaths since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
Arizona had reported 2,066 new cases and 22 deaths on Saturday, the highest daily total since early March. The numbers have been quickly climbing, with 1,759 cases, and 15 deaths reported Thursday and 1,965 cases, and 24 deaths reported Saturday. Public health officials in the state and elsewhere attribute the worsening spread to the very contagious delta variant and low vaccination rates.
HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The University of South Carolina is requiring students to wear masks indoors this fall as the spread of COVID-19 has sped up across the state.
School officials said that masks are again required inside campus buildings, given Richland County’s high coronavirus transmission rate.
The announcement follows recently updated federal guidance that calls for mask-wearing indoors regardless of vaccination status in areas where the delta variant is rapidly spreading.
Young adults have the lowest vaccination rate across age groups in South Carolina. But public colleges and universities in South Carolina can’t require students to get inoculated after lawmakers banned schools from making the vaccine a condition of enrollment.
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ORLANDO, Fla. — A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke its previous record for current hospitalizations, set more than a year ago.
The Sunshine State had 10,207 people hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to data reported to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
The previous record was from July 23, 2020, more than a half-year before vaccinations started becoming widespread. Florida then had 10,170 hospitalizations, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
Florida is now leading the nation in per capita hospitalizations for COVID-19, as hospitals around the state report having to put emergency room visitors in beds in hallways, and others document a noticeable drop in the age of patients.
In the past week, Florida has averaged 1,525 adult hospitalizations a day and 35 daily pediatric hospitalizations. Both are the highest per capita rate in the nation, according to Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida.
Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
