COVID-19 updates: 345 children currently hospitalized with coronavirus in Texas
That number was up from 282 on Thursday.
The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 643,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 61.7% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Florida Governor appeals court ruling invalidating his ban on student mask mandates
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis filed an appeal against a court ruling invalidating his ban on student mask mandates Thursday evening.
The governor had banned school districts from implementing mask mandates without a parent opt-out.
The move unleashed a stay of proceedings that enables the state to continue punishing districts, at least until Wednesday, when a judge will decide whether to vacate the stay.
In the meantime, school board members across the state could continue to lose their salaries if their schools set mask mandates -- a punishment given to board members in two counties and threatened to those in eight others.
The appeal comes a week after Judge John C. Cooper found that a blanket ban on face masks in schools "does not meet constitutional muster.”
-ABC News' Will McDuffie
1 out of 8 Americans has tested positive for COVID-19, 1 out of 510 Americans has died from the virus
The country’s COVID death toll has risen to more than 643,000 and the number of cases stands at 39.5 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
That means 1 out of 8 Americans has tested positive for COVID-19 and 1 out of 510 Americans has died of the virus.
Heading into Labor Day weekend health experts are urging the public, especially the unvaccinated, to act responsibly as the delta variant continues to fuel infections.
Holidays have proven to be a catalyst for virus spread in the U.S.
Last summer, shortly after Labor Day, the U.S. fell into its most significant viral surge of the pandemic.
Between the week following last Labor Day and Thanksgiving alone, the nation's daily case average surged by more than 400%.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos
US administers highest number of vaccine doses since July
Over "1.40M doses reported administered over yesterday's total, including 550K newly vaccinated and 96K additional doses," White House COVID-19 data director Cyrus Shahpar said Friday.
That's the highest dose total since July 1, he said.
So far over 175 million people, or 61.9% of the eligible population, are fully vaccinated.
CDC estimates 83% of US blood donors have been vaccinated or previously infected
A new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that roughly 83% of blood donors in the nation have either been vaccinated against COVID-19 or were previously infected with the virus.
This, however, does not mean that more than 80% of Americans are immune from infection. That's because neither vaccination nor prior infection provides 100% protection -- antibodies are just one part of the overall immune response, and immunity wanes over time. The analysis also may overestimate the portion of people with antibodies because blood donors may be more likely to be vaccinated or have previously been infected.
The study, posted online Tuesday by JAMA Network Open, a monthly open access medical journal published by the American Medical Association, took a snapshot of the presence of antibodies from COVID-19 vaccination or prior infection in about 1.4 million donated blood samples from across the United States. The repeated cross-sectional analysis was conducted each month during July 2020 through May 2021, before delta became the predominant variant of the novel coronavirus in the U.S.
The study shows that the number of blood donors who tested positive for antibodies, indicating either vaccination or prior infection, has gone up over time, from 3.5% in July 2020 to 20.2% for infection-induced antibodies and 83.3% for both infection- and vaccine-induced antibodies in May 2021.
Being vaccinated offers better protection compared to prior infection, and it's recommended that people who have previously contracted COVID-19 should still get inoculated.
-ABC News' Katie Bosland and Sony Salzman
2-dose vaccine 'appears to be enough,' FDA adviser says
Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee, said a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine "appears to be enough" to curb infection, rather than adding a booster shot.
"You look at states in the United States that have high immunization rates with a two-dose vaccine, it appears the two doses appears to be enough to be able to control this infection," Offit, who is also the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told ABC News on Thursday night. "I think the critical issue here is not going to be boosting the vaccinated. I think if we really want to get on top of this pandemic, it's going to be about vaccinating the unvaccinated."
The FDA's vaccine advisory committee is set to hold a key meeting on COVID-19 vaccine booster shots on Sept. 17, just three days before the Biden administration plans to begin offering the shots to Americans.
"If the companies or the FDA can make a case that there has been an erosion in protection against severe critical disease and that that erosion in protection against severe disease would be mediated or eliminated by a third dose, then we could move forward," Offit said. "But to date, we really need to see those data to be able to make that decision."