The U.S. could again see upward of 200,000 new coronavirus cases daily in the coming weeks amid slowing vaccination rates and a rapidly spreading delta variant, says a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The last time there were more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases in a day was in January, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
“We’re heading into a rough time,” former CDC chief Tom Frieden told CNN Monday. “It’s likely, if our trajectory is similar to that in the United Kingdom, that we could see as many as 200,000 cases a day.”
Frieden said that while death tolls likely won’t hit pre-vaccine levels, “You will see a steady increase in deaths, and these are preventable deaths.”
The increase in coronavirus cases is largely due to the increasing presence of the highly contagious delta variant, which has become the dominant strain of the virus. Additionally, only 49.1% of the country is fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, according to CDC data.
