Cases of the novel coronavirus are spiking in almost half of the United States right now, according to CNN.
- In fact, at least 21 states saw a spike in COVID-19 cases within the last week.
Why is COVID-19 spiking?
The country continues to roll out COVID-19 vaccines to millions of people every day. But that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over in the slightest, especially with COVID-19 variants floating out there and vaccine hesitancy, according to CNN.
- “However, between varying rates of vaccine hesitancy and the pace of vaccinations, the timeline for vaccinating all willing adults varies greatly among states — a growing concern because, for some locations, a new surge may have arrived,” CNN reports.
Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s COVID-19 czar, told CNN the United States saw a drop in COVID-19 cases in the beginning of the year because of the vaccine. Now, it appears that a new wave of cases has hit the United States.
- “We know that these vaccines are really responsible primarily for the 90% reduction in deaths we’ve seen over the first 13 weeks of 2021,” Marsh said, according to CNN.
Fourth spike
There have been warnings of a fourth spike for the better part of a month now, as I wrote for the Deseret News. Experts were concerned that the COVID-19 variants — including those discovered in Europe, Brazil and South Africa — could create more cases in the country.
In fact, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the new spike will be mostly among young people, who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19.
- “If you look what’s happening in Michigan, in Minnesota, in Massachusetts, for example, you’re seeing outbreaks in schools and infections in social cohorts that haven’t been exposed to the virus before.”
- “The infection is changing its contours in terms of who’s being stricken by it right now,” he added.