The five states with the highest death rates over the last week — Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, West Virginia and Idaho — are also among the states with the lowest full vaccination rates, according to federal data.
People who have not been fully vaccinated are 6.1 times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 and 11.3 times more likely to die from the virus, according to federal data.
Approximately 63.2 million eligible Americans have yet to get the shot, according to federal data.
But hospitalization rates are continuing to steadily trend down, with just over 51,000 Americans now hospitalized with the virus, compared to 104,000 people hospitalized in late August, according to federal data.
More than 45.6 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and over 738,000 individuals have died from the virus in the U.S., according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
FDA panel greenlights vaccines for kids, paving the way for authorization
Vaccines for 28 million American children are on the way to authorization after an advisory panel at the Food and Drug Administration voted in support of the Pfizer vaccine for kids ages 5-11 on Tuesday afternoon.
The vote was the first step in a regulatory process for the two-shot Pfizer vaccine that could allow kids to get their first shots in early November and become fully immunized by early December.
Next, leaders of the FDA have the chance to officially sign off, potentially as soon as Tuesday night. If and when that happens, the White House will begin shipping doses, senior officials told governors on a call Tuesday afternoon that was obtained by ABC News.
But there are still more steps before shots go into arms: If authorized by the FDA, the process would move to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention next Tuesday, when a CDC panel meets to discuss the same data reviewed by the FDA advisers.
Although children are less likely to die of COVID-19 than older adults, nearly 2 million kids in the 5-11 age group have gotten COVID. Of those, 8,300 have been hospitalized, about one-third of whom have been in the intensive care unit, and almost 100 kids have died.
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