In 2 days President Joe Biden will announce a new six-point plan to battle the current surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the highly transmissible Delta (B1617.2) variant and an uneven vaccination campaign that has left only half of the nation fully protected from the novel coronavirus.

The speech will come as America faces two milestones: Over the holiday weekend, the country topped 40 million cases of the virus, the largest tally in the world, and the number of hospitalized Americans is now double what it was last Labor Day. Yesterday, almost 100,000 (99,823) Americans were in hospitals because of COVID-19 infections.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the United States' 7-day average of new cases yesterday was 137,270. The average on Labor Day of last year was 39,355.

The United States reported 73,331 new COVID-19 cases yesterday and 530 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker. In total, the United States has confirmed 40,172,815 COVID-19 cases, including 649,973 deaths.

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