months? i don t think there s any indication of that. sometimes when you talk about these boosters and a lot of vaccines do have boosters, after the booster shot you may not need it again for ten years, something like tetanus. obviously flu is a little bit of a different situation because you re not so much boosting for flu as you re sort of acknowledging that the flu virus itself drifts and you need to have a different vaccine to try and protect against that. i just don t think that we know, but i think that the point you make about when you show the hospitalization numbers and you remind people that 99% roughly of the people, 95 at least percent of the people who are in the hospital are unvaccinated. most of the transmission of virus that s going on in this country are among the unvaccinated, that this booster of the vaccinated may not necessarily address some of those problems right away. what s driving this, jake, is interesting. it s not a slam-dunk decision.
nearly 80,000 americans right now hospitalized with covid, that is the most that we have seen in six months, by the way. and hatch of all of these covid patients are in eight states that you see here on this map. one of those states, mississippi, is seeing its highest hospitalization numbers ever. republican governor tate reeves is extending the state of emergency but says there will be no lockdown or mask mandates. florida governor ron desantis is deploying a rapid response team to fight his state s coronavirus surge with antibody treatments, but he still refusing to allow schools and local communities the freedom to make their own decisions about how to battle covid in their areas and they are threatening to withhold sal r salaries of schools that make those decisions. louisiana has the highest rate of new infections in the country behind florida, and its low vaccination rate means that hospitals there are overwhelmed. so cnn s don lemon went back home to baton rouge. he visited th
single dose. all this as schools are reopening across the country. jonathan serrie is live in atlanta for us. here in the southeast many school districts have already reopened and here in metro atlanta several school districts are reporting first cases of covid-19. the numbers in the hundreds. the delta variant is more than two times as contagious as previous strains of the virus and although school children, children in general are at low risk, relatively low risk for serious complications from the disease compared to older folks, their hospitalization numbers are increasing. in fact, twice as many kids have died from covid as they would in a previous typical flu season. obviously this is something people need to take seriously and causing educators and some politicians to rethink mask mandates. back in the spring arkansas governor hutcheson, republican, signed a law blocking school
shots, and that is because officials are attempting to boost vaccination rates here in the state of florida. when we talk about vaccinations, according to the most recent numbers just released by the florida department of public health, 63% of people in the state over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated with about 70% having one shot. when you include the number on a broader perspective of children of all residents, that number drops to just 49%. and that is the problem are those vaccination rates, among many other things happening here. in fact, according to the latest numbers of the department of public health, as of last week, more than 134,000 people battling coronavirus here in the state. and you talk about those hospitalization numbers. florida broke its record for hospitalizations. so far across the state, nearly 12,000 people in the hospital battling coronavirus. this is also overwhelming
now 1,071. deaths often lag about three weeks behind the hospitalization numbers so while they re only at 5, we need to watch those numbers carefully. the new cases exploding. 3045 in los angeles county. this is putting a burden on the hospital system. and weary nurses need to get off their feet. today in west los angeles they did just that. a salon offering a free makeover. one of these hero nurses has been fighting covid for a year and a half. she also, while trying on a wedding gown, raced outside a shop and tended to a woman who had been struck by a car. she got married this week. in very same wedding gown. she s been at this a long time. we asked her what about people who have unvaccinated relatives? what would you tell them? here s what she said. i don t want to be the last thing that you see. i want you to be surrounded by your family and friends and their comfort. as much as we try to build community around our patients,