In Louisiana, 1,268 COVID-19 cases have been reported since Monday, and over half of those are people under 40.

Those ages 5 to 17 make up 21% of the cases, state health officials said. Louisiana residents ages 18 to 29 make up 16% and people between the ages of 30 to 39 account for 16%.

Louisiana has lost 13,558 residents to COVID-19 since the pandemic began, state health officials said.

The state currently has 1,239 COVID-19 patients in hospitals.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday visited the public art installation on the National Mall that commemorates the American lives lost to COVID-19.

More than 660,000 white flags were planted in the biggest participatory art installation on the National Mall since the AIDS Quilt. The installation is open to the public from Sept. 17 to Oct. 3.

FEMA is preparing to send 50 ambulances and 100 personnel to North Carolina to help with shortages statewide, according to a federal planning document obtained by ABC News.

Alaska and West Virginia have each asked the Department of Health and Human Services to provide 50 ventilators, the document said, while the Defense Department is sending a 23-person military medical team to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

-ABC News' Brian Hartman

President Joe Biden kicked off his first speech at the United Nations General Assembly since taking office by focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, the global death toll and the need to "act together."

"Will we work together to save lives, defeat COVID-19 everywhere and take the necessary steps to prepare ourselves for the next pandemic, if there will be another one? Or will we fail to harness the tools at our disposal as the dangerous variants take hold?" Biden said Tuesday.

"To fight this pandemic, we need a collective act of science and political will. We need to act now to get shots in arms as fast as possible. Expand access to oxygen, tests, treatments, to save lives around the world," he said. "And for the future, we need to create a new mechanism to finance global health security."

The president touted global vaccine donations, saying the U.S. has sent more than 160 million doses to 100 other countries.

Biden said he would announce "additional commitments" at Wednesday's virtual COVID-19 summit.

-ABC News' Justin Ryan Gomez

The nation’s largest union of registered nurses pushed back against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel's vote on COVID-19 booster shots, calling not including front-line workers like nurses in its recommendations "unconscionable."

National Nurses United is urging CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to bypass what the advisory panel, ACIP, recommended and add nurses and other health care workers to the list of eligible booster recipients.  

"Nurses and other health care workers were among the first to be vaccinated because of their high risk of exposure to the virus," Deborah Burger, the union's president, said in a statement. "Why leave them out of booster shots?"

“It is unconscionable that ACIP would not vote to keep us safer from death, severe Covid, and long Covid,” Burger continued. “We must do everything possible to ensure that the health of our nurses and other health care workers will not be put even more at risk."

ACIP voted Thursday to recommend a third Pfizer dose for people aged 65 and older, as well as those as young as 18 if they have an underlying medical condition.

In its authorization Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration did agree to make the shots available to front-line workers. But ACIP said there was not yet enough data to support providing booster shots automatically to young people because of their jobs.

-ABC News' Sasha Pezenik