Covid hospitalizations reach highs of last summer as Biden tries to win over unvaccinated – live

The US has now shipped more than 110 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to more than 60 countries, the White House said this morning.

According to a fact sheet from the White House, the United Nations has said the US vaccine donations surpass those of all other countries combined.

The countries that have received the vaccine donations range from Ecuador to Nigeria and Vietnam. Indonesia has received the highest number of vaccines from the US, with 8,000,000 doses going to the Southeast Asian country.

“In June, the President committed to donate at least 80 million vaccines from the U.S. supply to countries throughout the world, and he promised to continue to share as we are able,” the White House said.

“Today’s announcement is a fulfillment of his promise and a significant down payment on hundreds of millions of more doses that the U.S. will deliver in the coming weeks.”

The White House described the donations as “just the beginning” of the Biden administration’s efforts to vaccinate more people around the world. Starting later this month, the administration will begin shipping 500 million Pfizer vaccine doses to 100 low-income countries.

Biden is scheduled to deliver a speech this afternoon on his administration’s ongoing vaccination efforts, and he will likely tout this accomplishment.

Richard Luscombe reports for the Guardian:

At least 70% of adults in the US have now received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, the White House announced on Monday, reaching a target Joe Biden originally said he had hoped to achieve by 4 July.

The administration reported the news in a tweet hailing “Milestone Monday” by Cyrus Shahpar, the government’s Covid-19 data director, who said the seven-day average of people receiving their first dose – 320,000 – was the highest since the Independence Day holiday.

Health and government officials have in recent days painted the resurgence of coronavirus as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, highlighting that areas of the country with the most spread were those with lower than average vaccination rates, and almost all hospitalizations and deaths are now among those declining to be vaccinated.

“Communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said, noting that “breakthrough” infections in vaccinated people were rare.

But with unvaccinated people increasingly at risk, Walensky said at the White House coronavirus team briefing on Monday: “While we desperately want to be done with this pandemic, Covid-19 is clearly not done with us, and so our battle must last a little longer.”

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Coronavirus hospitalizations continue to climb in the US, now reaching the levels of last summer’s surge in cases, as the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across the country.

More than 51,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with coronavirus, according to Eric Topol, the executive vice president of Scripps Research. Topol said he expects this latest surge to surpass the first and second wave in terms of hospitalizations, but the current numbers are still lower than the deadly January wave.

The sobering news comes as millions of eligible Americans remain unvaccinated. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 49.7% of all Americans are now fully vaccinated.

The data also shows that 70% of American adults now have at least one vaccine dose, which means the US has surpassed the milestone that Joe Biden had hoped to hit by July 4.

The president continues to plead with unvaccinated Americans to get their shot as quickly as possible, repeatedly noting that almost all coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths are occurring among unvaccinated people.

“This is an American tragedy,” Biden said last week. “People are dying and will die who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die.”

Biden will deliver another speech on his administration’s vaccination efforts this afternoon, so stay tuned.