truly interested in soccer? there s an old saying, soccer is the sport of the future in america and always will be. here to break down the data for us on how the public feels about this, cnn, harry anten. what have you found? let s take a look at the ratings. the highest rated world cup soccer matches, we have a new number one, the usa versus england got 15.5 million. that beat the all-time record in the united states, which was 14.5 million all the way back in 1994. it s not so surprising to me that we in fact saw higher ratings. why? because take a look at this long-term trend. favorite sport to watch, soccer. 2022, it s 8%. that might not seem large, but look where it was back in 1992. it was just 1%. and back 32 years before that it was 0%. so support for soccer, people liking to watch the support is clearly going up. you always like the trends. you also notice when it comes to the fans of tomorrow, a lot more young people are into soccer
science. a source tells cnn the pfizer vaccine booster plan remains on track for the week of september 20th, but it could take a few weeks longer to move forward with boosters from moderna. now, covid keeps surging with the country averaging 160,000 new cases every day. we haven t seen these kinds of numbers since january. they are three times higher than we were seeing last labor day, around half of the country right now fully vaccinated. there is a positive sign, and that is a slight drop in hospitalizations. the delta variant s two-month surge has generated a sharp rise in public fears about contracting the coronavirus and a reduction in vaccine hesitancy. joining us, cnn senior data reporter, harry anten. i want to start with the good news, vaccinations have gone up. we are seeing a drop in hesitancy. yeah, we are. look, i like good news, especially on labor day as we
unvaccinated just do not fear this pandemic. and you know what? it s a scary situation. they should. and if they did, they d get vaccinated. i hope they do. then they will get vaccinated. hopefully some of the information we continue to share on air and the numbers you ve been sharing and reporting, the stats, will help them make a decision and get vaccinated. harry, it s great to see you. thank you for all that information. joining us now, the director of the center for vaccine development at the university of maryland school of medicine. doctor, the good news is vaccinations have picked up. more than 700,000 people are getting shots daily over at least the past five days. if we can keep up this pace, when might we hit herd immunity? yeah. it s a good question. i m not sure i can do the math that fast in my head, but it s absolutely terrific news that we are seeing vaccinations pick up again. you know, we did hear some sobering news last week about how contagious this delta
worse. you ve also heard the vaccine is available to us simply put, work. but now there is hard evidence, data to underscore that point. let s bring in our senior data reporter, harry anten who has been crunching the numbers. first, getting vaccinated seems to significantly improve your chances of staying out of the hospital and surviving. that s exactly right. these are new numbers from the cdc. and i love them because they ve just so clear. you speak about hospitalizations first. look, around the time july 26th when the study was done through july 26th, 163 million plus folks were vaccinated. how many were not hospitalize the because of covid? 54%. those not did not die from covid, more than 163 million people. percentage of the vaccinated, greater than 99.999%. my goodness gracious.
we see her? overall, white folks, 61% of those who have received a first dose are white but in the last two weeks that s down to 45%. we ve seen major jumps, particularly among black and especially hispanic folk, in the last two weeks, their percentage of the first dosage over the last two weeks, very, very high. so i do think, even if the partisan gap is winding, the race and ethnicity gap has been shrinking. that s good news. i m glad you ended on good news. hopefully it will serve as positive reenforcement for people to keep going and maybe we will hit that goal, thank you. keep going, keep going. these shots are great, hay lou you to live your life. it does. it makes a world of difference. my biggest side effect was a feeling of relief and joy after receiving my vaccines, thank you, harry. a quick programming note, president obama joins anderson cooper tonight for a rare one on one about his life, post presidency. it s an anderson cooper 360 special, barack obama on fatherh