Will the resurgence of COVID-19 cases threaten the U.S. economic recovery?
At the national level the resurgence of COVID-19 cases, now mostly due to the highly contagious Delta variant, remains modest. Although new cases have quadrupled in the past three weeks, overall infection rates are still only 20% of the peak at the start of the year. But that national average hides a big regional divergence, with states in the southeast and those with lower vaccination rates seeing the biggest uptick not only in infections, but hospitalizations and fatalities.