A group of men read the safety measures of the public while enjoying the pubs and restaurants on South Beach during the Spring Break amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Miami, Florida, March 27, 2021.
Yana Paskova | Reuters
Hospitals are seeing more and more younger adults in their thirties and forties admitted with severe cases of Covid-19, Drs. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday.
“Data suggests this is all happening as we see increasing prevalence of variants, with 52 jurisdictions now reporting cases of worrying variants,” Walensky said in a press release on the pandemic.
Scientists say that new variants of the coronavirus are more transmissible, and that some of them can also be more deadly, which can lead to worse cases.
The highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant of the United Kingdom has become the dominant strain circulating in the United States, Walensky said.
Walensky warned earlier that the trip to the spring break could lead to another increase in cases, especially in Florida where the variant is spreading rapidly.
“I plead with you for the health of our country,” Walensky said during a briefing last month. “Cases climbed last spring, they climbed again in the summer. They will climb now if we stop taking precautions as we get more and more people vaccinated.”
The B.1.1.7 variant has since spread and now covers more than 16,000 cases in 52 jurisdictions in the country. The variant is about 50% more transmissible than the original wild strain of the coronavirus.