The U.S. may face between 850 and 4,000 daily COVID-19 deaths by October if more people don’t get vaccinated, according to recent modeling reported by CNN on Sunday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said it’s not likely the country hits the model’s “worst-case” scenario of 4,000 deaths. But the nation’s daily death toll may increase beyond 850 — which is more than triple the current average — unless more people get vaccinated, “particularly when you have a variant like delta, which has this extraordinary characteristic of being able to spread very efficiently and very easily from person-to-person,” Fauci warned.
“We’re going in the wrong direction,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It is among the unvaccinated; since we have 50% of the country that is not fully vaccinated, that’s a problem.”
Fauci noted that the vaccines remain “highly protective against the delta variant,” particularly against COVID-19 leading to severe cases, hospitalization or death.
“It’s really an outbreak among the unvaccinated,” he said. “We’re out there practically pleading with the unvaccinated people.”
Pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper on whether U.S. health officials were premature when they said the country appeared to have turned the corner with the pandemic a couple months ago, Fauci argued the virus was “in retreat among the vaccinated.”
“There are really two kinds of America,” he said, noting vaccinated Americans face significantly less risk.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that daily new cases had seen a fourfold increase compared to June. Roughly 97% of the patients being treated for COVID-19 have not been vaccinated.
The Times noted that states like Louisiana — one of several reporting spikes due to the delta variant — averaged fewer than 400 new cases per day at the start of the month; now Louisiana officials report more than 2,400.
In Massachusetts, the seven-day average rate of positive tests has nearly doubled to 1.53% in recent weeks.
Health officials this week said that at least 250 new COVID cases in Provincetown were linked to the Fourth of July weekend.
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