Ahead of Omicron, COVID hospitalizations are rising in 37 U.S states

U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations are now rising in 37 of 50 states, including several with above-average vaccination rates.

Meanwhile, COVID cases are again starting to climb in nearly half of the other 13 states, signaling that hospitalizations may soon follow. Among them is Florida, where cases bottomed out after a deadly summer outbreak but have increased 29 percent over the last two weeks.

These sobering figures underscore the fact that many Americans remain vulnerable to the still-surging Delta variant as the holiday season ramps up and Delta’s heavily mutated and perhaps even faster-spreading successor, Omicron, looms on the horizon.

Nationally, the number of Americans now hospitalized for COVID — nearly 65,000 — is higher than it’s been in two months. An average of 120,000 Americans are testing positive for COVID each day; nearly 1,300 are dying. And all three metrics are heading in the wrong direction. ...

While hospitalizations are currently rising in 14 of the 17 states (plus Washington, D.C.) with the highest full vaccination rates, most of the same states — including New York, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, Vermont and California — still have fewer people in the hospital, per capita, than the national average, and none are recording more deaths than they were at last winter’s peak. In September, unvaccinated Americans were 14 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than fully vaccinated Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s the power of vaccination. ...

The problem is that the story is different in some places with lower vaccine uptake, or with older populations whose earlier vaccine protection may be wearing off.

In Michigan, where just 55 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, the hospitalization rate (46 people per every 100,000 residents) is now higher than anywhere else in the country — and higher than at any previous point in the pandemic. Average daily deaths (121) are as high as they were last Christmas.

Several other states — Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine and possibly Pennsylvania — appear to be on a similar path. For them, this winter could be worse than the last. ...