The US once again surpassed India for highest number of daily COVID-19 cases, the first time since vaccines were made widely available

• In the past week, new daily reported cases in the US rose by nearly 60%, according to The Washington Post.
• India's number of daily COVID-19 cases has remained around 40,000 throughout July.
• The Delta variant is now the predominant COVID-19 strain in the US, according to the CDC.

For the first time since before vaccines were made widely available in America, the United States has overtaken India as the country with the highest daily count of new COVID-19 cases.

On July 24, the US reported over 63,000 new cases, while India reported approximately 40,000 new cases.

The last time the daily total of COVID-19 cases in the US was higher than that of India was March 30 of this year, according to Johns Hopkins' tracker.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) latest weekly review stated that COVID-19 cases are on the rise in nearly 90% of US jurisdictions, with outbreaks concentrated in parts of the country that have low vaccination rates.

Additionally, the Delta variant is now the predominant variant in the US, making up an estimated 83.2% of recent cases, according to the CDC.

States like California and New York have implemented vaccination mandates for certain sectors in order to combat transmissions, hospitalizations, and deaths. However, with only 49% of the country's population fully vaccinated, the Delta variant will continue to spread in areas with low vaccination rates and creates more opportunities for the virus to mutate, according to the CDC.

Dr. Jerome Adams, a former surgeon general, said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" that vaccine mandates would be the quickest way to raise vaccination rates, but that won't happen without full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration.