US Barreling Towards 200,000 Daily COVID Cases: This Is A ‘Heartbreaking Situation,’ NIH Director Warns

The U.S. is on a path to hitting well over 200,000 daily cases of the coronavirus as the Delta variant continues to spread across the nation, according to the National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins.

Collins warned of the surge in positive cases of the virus across the country, telling “Fox News Sunday” that “I will be surprised if we don't cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks.”

He continued: “That's heartbreaking considering we never thought we would ever be back in that space again. But here we are with the Delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated.”

Collins told “Fox News Sunday” that those people who are still unvaccinated are “sitting ducks” as 114,190 new cases of the virus were reported daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current seven-day moving average.

Collins cautioned, “It's [the virus] looking for you.”

Collins continued his warning for the unvaccinated, telling the news outlet, “We're in a world of hurt and it's a critical juncture to try to do everything we can to turn that around.”

The nation’s leading disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci, agreed with Collins.

He told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “We are going to have to continue to get people vaccinated so that right now, even in states in which you have a good relative proportion of people vaccinated, you have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated.”

CNN reported that Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, and Texas are behind the national average for vaccinations and account for about 51% of COVID-19 patients throughout the nation while only making up 24% of the U.S. population.

According to CDC data, over 168.3 million Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, accounting for 50.7% of the U.S. population.