US COVID-19 Cases In Vermont Up 320%, Missouri 219% And Texas 168%

Three states in the U.S. are witnessing a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections as the virus death toll in the country surpasses 800,000.

COVID-19 case rates have been surging in Vermont, Missouri and Texas over the past two weeks, authorities said.

In Vermont, health officials have recorded a 320% increase in daily new infections. Missouri has reported a 219% increase in its daily COVID-19 cases. Infection rates in Texas are up 168%, according to a CNN analysis of COVID-19 data from Johns Hopkins University.

Vermont hit another record Friday after officials reported 740 new infections, surpassing a single-day record of 604 reported Thursday. There are 72 people hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, 19 of whom are in intensive care units. The state’s rolling positivity rate sits at 4.7%, the state’s COVID-19 dashboard showed.

In Missouri, an additional 2,113 new COVID-19 cases were reported Saturday, bringing the state’s seven-day positivity rate to 12.4%. As of Thursday last week, 1,866 patients were admitted to hospitals with COVID-19, 420 of whom were in the ICU and 226 were on ventilators.

Texas on Saturday reported 2,095 new COVID-19 infections, the state’s coronavirus dashboard showed. As of Dec. 9, there were 8,097 adult beds available in hospitals across the state, 585 of which were in the adult ICU and 101 were in pediatric ICU.

The rise of COVID-19 cases in the three states comes as the country surpasses the grim milestone of 800,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, exceeding the entire population of North Dakota. Since the start of 2021, more than 450,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., according to a Reuters tally.

The U.S. has reported 49,921,405 coronavirus cases and is bracing for another potential surge of COVID-19 infections as the winter season nears and the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads.