As of September 17, 2021, after experiencing a brief decline in COVID-19 cases, the United States is once again seeing an increase in cases in most of the country. This recent increase follows a previous summer surge that was fueled by the highly contagious Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and low vaccination coverage in many communities. COVID-19 vaccines offer strong protection against serious illness and death. High vaccination coverage is proven to reduce the spread of the virus. The less a virus spreads, the less opportunity there is for new variants to emerge. The United States continues in the sixth week of an upward trend in COVID-19 cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) attributes the increases to:

• The lifting of social distancing and mask mandates in some areas; and
• The presence of more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2.

The current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (148,538) increased 2.8% compared with the previous 7-day  moving average (138,087). The current 7-day moving average is 107.2% higher compared to the peak observed on July 20, 2020 (68,522). The current 7-day moving average is 44.1% lower than the peak observed on January 10, 2021 (253,932) and is 1,117.9% higher than the lowest value observed on June 18, 2021 (11,660). A total of 40.6 Million COVID-19 cases have been reported as of September 9, 2021