Nearly 600 patients wait for hospital beds in Houston as city sees surge in COVID cases
According to the CDC, 46% of Texans have been fully vaccinated.
The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 620,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.3 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 59.1% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama leading nation in cases
Florida currently has the nation's highest COVID-19 case rate, followed by Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi and Texas, according to federal data.
Across the country, 90% of counties -- home to 98% of the U.S. population -- have reported high (a seven-day new case rate ≥100) or substantial (a seven-day new case rate between 50-99.99) community transmission in the last week.
According to federal data, these states have high or substantial transmission in every county: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos
New Americans getting vaccinated at the highest rate in over 2 months
New Americans are getting vaccinated at the highest rate in over two months, White House COVID-19 data director Cyrus Shahpar tweeted.
There are currently 166,524,108 Americans ages 12 and up who are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
US hospitalizations could quadruple by Labor Day
More than 8,300 Americans are currently being admitted to hospitals each day for COVID-19.
The COVID19 Forecast Hub at U Mass Amherst, used by the CDC, predicts that hospital admissions could skyrocket to as high as 33,300 per day by Sept. 4.
Even the lowest end of the forecast -- 9,600 hospital admissions per day -- is much higher than where we are now.
-ABC News' Brian Hartman
Dallas, Austin school districts to require masks
The Dallas Independent School District, the second largest in Texas, said it's temporarily requiring face masks for all students, staff and visitors as of Tuesday.
It's not clear how long the mask mandate will last.
In the Austin Independent School District, students, staff and visitors must wear face masks beginning Wednesday.
This comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott imposed a ban on mask mandates.
In Houston, Texas' biggest school district, the board of education will vote this week on a proposed mask requirement, according to ABC Dallas affiliate WFAA.
No indications hard-hit Louisiana has reached peak: Governor
In hard-hit Louisiana, where the positivity rate is about 15%, Gov. John Bel Edwards told "GMA 3"there's no indication the state has reached the peak of this surge.
Louisiana has more than 2,700 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, the governor said, noting that during the previous surge's peak, hospitalizations only reached 2,100.
"We are having the worst situation in terms of the pandemic across the board here in Louisiana. And unfortunately, we don't see anything that indicates that we have peaked," he said. "Cases continue to go up, hospitalizations, and 20% of new infections over the past couple of weeks have been in children under 18."
The governor has reinstated a mask mandate for August as cases skyrocket.
Edwards noted that "the two sectors of the economy hit hardest by COVID related to oil and gas because the demand fell so much for those products, and then to tourism because people stopped traveling."
"This is a very serious blow. But we believe and hope that this is going to be a relatively temporary change, not unlike the one that we had last March, and that sometime over the next several weeks, we will get past this surge and then continue to get people vaccinated and that the confidence will increase," he said.