Today in a White House news briefing, public health officials spotlighted the COVID-19 surges appearing across the country and reiterated the urgency for people to get vaccinated.

Not only has the moving 7-day average of new daily cases increased every day this week, but Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, said that 10% of US counties were recently reclassified as "high transmission risk" areas and 7% moved into the "substantial risk" category. Many of these areas, she added, corresponded with low vaccination rates.

"There is a clear message that is coming through. This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Walensky said.

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, and Anthony Fauci, MD, the White House chief medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also spoke during the briefing.