COVID-19 Hospitalizations, Cases Surge in US Southern States

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The number of new hospitalizations and cases due to new variants of the novel COVID-19 coronavirus have surged in the southern US states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama.

"We saw the largest single-day increase in hospitalizations and have eclipsed our previous high of COVID hospitalizations," Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said on Monday.

Hutchinson said there are only eight Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds available in the state. He emphasized that vaccinations will help reduce the number of hospitalizations in the future, a reversal of his earlier assertions against the vaccine regime.

Arkansas's health department reported that 103 people were hospitalized overnight in the state, bringing the total number of current hospitalizations to 1,376.

For a sixth day in a row Louisiana has reported record-high hospitalizations as of Monday, with 2,720 people currently in hospitals due to the disease, according to the state's health department. Ninety-one percent of the patients hospitalized with COVID-19 are not fully vaccinated.

The Mississippi Department of Health on Monday reported 6,912 new cases of COVID-19 and 28 deaths; ninety-seven percent of all new cases are unvaccinated. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said the recent data suggests the Delta variant is becoming a "pandemic of the unvaccinated".

The states of Florida and Alabama have also seen record numbers of COVID-19 cases.

Florida has been hit the hardest in the Delta variant wave of infections. In the first week of August, the state reported 134,506 new coronavirus cases.