COVID-19 surge taxes hospitals

As COVID-19 infection rates hit levels not seen since January of this year, Alabama reported its ICUs were at 100 percent capacity, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday. Hospitals in some areas say they are having trouble getting enough medical oxygen. As the delta variant spreads, daily deaths from COVID-19 have quadrupled since early July and climbed to March levels, according to the data tracking site Worldometer. Just over a thousand Americans are dying from the coronavirus each day. Officials estimate that about 98 percent of those deaths are among unvaccinated patients.

What does the vaccination rate look like? It has also increased. About 380,000 Americans got their first shot each day for the past seven days, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s an increase of 73 percent since late July.

Dig deeper: Read Charissa Koh’s report on how officials are managing coronavirus among migrants at the U.S. southern border.