The seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases increased 10% this week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
NBC News reports that Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said Thursday that the seven-day average of new cases this week was about 12,600 cases -- up 10% from the average last week.
While this week’s number is down from more than 247,000 COVID-19 cases per day in January, according to NBC News, this week’s rise in cases comes as the highly contagious delta variant continues to spread.
The Florida Department of Health in Duval County told News4Jax on Wednesday that there has been more than one delta variant case reported in Jacksonville.
Health Department records show that Duval County jumped from 4% to 7% of people testing positive for COVID-19 in the past month.
“It is more transmissible and more people can catch it and more people get infected and sick with this variant,” said Dr. Mohammed Reza, an infectious disease specialist. “The good thing is, the vaccines that we have available to us are effective against this variant as well.”
The Jacksonville doctor pointed out that recent data shows the majority of people dying from COVID haven’t been vaccinated.
“For the month of May, we had 18,000 lives lost to this virus and 99 percent of those who died had not been vaccinated. So that tells you these vaccines work,” Reza said.
He pointed out that the vaccine isn’t 100% guaranteed to prevent you from getting the virus, but it will decrease the severity if you contract the virus.
“It’s going to be very mild and 84 percent of people that were vaccinated had no symptoms, even against this Delta variant,” Reza said.