US Covid-19 death rate soars 89pc in two weeks

Total daily new cases have soared to 118,000, their highest since February; deaths are up 89 per cent over the past two weeks.

Masked in midtown Manhattan as a safeguard to the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is as contagious as chickenpox. Picture: AFP

With the US recording its highest daily Covid case load in six months, a top public health official has warned that the country is “failing” in its battle to keep the coronavirus in check.

A surge of the highly transmissible Delta variant has brought a slew of bad news in the US, which already has the highest reported death toll worldwide from Covid-19 at more than 616,000.

Total daily new cases have soared to 118,000, their highest since February; deaths are up 89 per cent over the past two weeks, even while slightly declining around the world; and children’s hospitals in states such as Florida are being overwhelmed as young people are increasingly affected.

“We should not really have ever got to the place we are,” Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told ABC on Sunday (Monday AEDT). “In that regard, yes, we are failing.”

Fears about the Delta variant have sparked a surge in vaccinations — 50.6 per cent of Americans are fully vaccinated — but millions, especially in conservative areas of the country, remain sceptical about getting the shot.

“We would not be in the place we are right now with this Delta surge if we had been more effective in getting everybody vaccinated,” Dr Collins said. “Now we’re paying a terrible price.”

Infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci, who advises President Joe Biden, said final full approval of key vaccines from the Food and Drug Administration could come as early as this month — something some sceptics have said they need to hear before taking the plunge.

“I hope that it’s within the month of August,” Dr Fauci told NBC. For now, the coronavirus vaccines have been approved on an emergency use basis to counter the pandemic.

Dr Fauci warned that failure to bring the Delta variant under control would increase the chances of a new variant emerging, which “could be more problematic than Delta”.

Children under 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccines, and Dr Collins warned that if the millions of children soon returning to school are not required to wear masks, the virus will “spread more widely”. “It will probably result in outbreaks in schools, and kids will have to go back to remote learning, which is the one thing we want to prevent,” he said.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on Twitter on Sunday that even asymptomatic children can spread Covid-19. “Children 2 years or older should wear masks in public indoor settings, including schools.”

Yet in Florida, one of the states hardest hit by the surge, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis sparked a furore when he issued an order barring the state’s school districts from mandating mask wearing. But with hospitals in the state struggling under a fast-growing patient load, a handful of school districts said they would defy the order.

“Our children’s hospitals are completely overwhelmed,” Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, told CNN.

Dr Collins expressed exasperation that the debates over vaccine and mask wearing had become politicised. “This is not a political statement or an invasion of your liberties. This is a life-saving medical device,” he said.

AFP