As the Delta variant continues to fuel another devastating COVID surge, the U.S. is now averaging 1,000 daily deaths for the first time since March. One in five intensive care units across the country are at or above 95% capacity as some states are seeing more hospitalizations than during the winter peak.

Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife Jacqueline were hospitalized in Chicago after testing positive for coronavirus. The famed civil rights leader is fully vaccinated and received his first COVID-19 shot at a public event in January to encourage others to get the vaccine.

The Food and Drug Administration is set to give full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as early as today. The approval is expected to lead to more workplaces and educational institutions enacting vaccine mandates.

In South Carolina, Republican Party leader and Trump loyalist Pressley Stutts has died of COVID-19. Stutts opposed mask and vaccine mandates and claimed that COVID-19 was a man-made disease. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump was booed at an Alabama rally Saturday after telling his supporters to get vaccinated.

The Bay Area newspaper The Mercury News is reporting the first U.S. COVID fatalities occurred earlier, and in more locations, than previously thought. Records now show COVID listed as a cause of death in California, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin as early as January 2020. Scientists say the virus could have been circulating in the U.S. in December or even November of 2019.