Insider 8 September 2021 - by vgu@insider.com (Vanessa Gu)
© Provided by INSIDER Passengers wait at the concourse of Union Station September 3, 2021 in Washington, DC, as the CDC warned that the unvaccinated should stay home. Alex Wong/Getty Images
- The US recorded three times as many COVID-19 cases on Labour Day as it did on the holiday last year.
- It also recorded nearly twice as many deaths. Millions of people travelled over the weekend.
- Roughly 100,000 people in the US are hospitalized with COVID-19.
The US recorded three times as many coronavirus cases on Labour Day this year as it did on the holiday last year, while deaths from COVID-19 were up almost twofold, according to The New York Times' COVID-19 tracker.
The country recorded 76,976 new coronavirus cases on Monday, compared with 25,166 on last year's Labour Day, along with 515 deaths, compared with 263 on the holiday last year. Both numbers are most likely undercounts, as The Times noted many states did not reveal COVID-19 statistics on Labor Day.
Hospitalizations year over year were also up 150%. There were 98,632 on Monday, compared with 39,515 on the Labour Day last year, according to the tracker.
The large number of hospitalizations is straining the US health system. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that 75% of hospital beds were in use, and COVID-19 patients took up one-third of all intensive-care-unit beds.
Scores of people travelled for the holidays, which could exacerbate the virus' spread. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention last week warned unvaccinated people against traveling for the holidays; vaccination dramatically reduces a person's risk of catching COVID-19 or being hospitalized with it.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing last week that "with disease transmission right now, we would say that people need to take their own - these risks into their own consideration as they think about traveling."
The Transportation Security Administration reported that 5.2 million travellers passed through its checkpoints from Saturday through Monday.
The US is struggling to contain the Delta virus variant, which has led to a surge in infections and hospitalizations mostly among the unvaccinated.
