(WASHINGTON) — COVID-19 vaccinations rose 14% over the past week, White House officials said Friday, as the more contagious delta variant is quickly spreading in under-vaccinated areas.

“In the past 7 days 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%),” Cyrus Shahpar, the White House COVID-19 data director, said on Twitter Friday.

“The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US,” he added. “Get vaccinated!”

Friday just in: +600K doses reported administered over yesterday’s total, incl. 363K newly vaccinated. In the past 7 days, 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%). The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US. Get vaccinated!

— Cyrus Shahpar (@cyrusshahpar46) July 23, 2021

The delta variant now makes up over 80% of cases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday, up from 50% at the beginning of July.

It’s unclear at the moment whether the increase in vaccinations is a blip or a trend. An ABC News analysis of CDC data shows that, as of Thursday, the number of COVID-19 vaccinations had plateaued at about 530,000 total shots administered per day. Over the last week, on average, 297,202 people initiated vaccination per day — 9.6% higher than the previous seven days.

On average, 236,791 adults initiated vaccination each day in the last seven days — 7.4% higher than the previous seven days, the analysis found. Among 12- to 17-year-olds, that number rose nearly 20%.

The five states that currently have the highest COVID-19 case rates are seeing their vaccination numbers increase, according to the White House. Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada are seeing a higher rate of people getting their first shots compared to the national average, Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on COVID-19, told reporters Thursday.

“This is a very positive trend,” he added.

Visits to the website vaccines.gov from users in Alabama — the least-vaccinated state — have gone up three times in the last two weeks, according to epidemiologist and ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein. Meanwhile, people in Louisiana and Missouri have doubled visits to the site, he found, suggesting people there are seeking information on where to get a shot.

On Friday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called on people to get vaccinated, as the daily average of new COVID-19 cases has tripled over the last two weeks in the state.

“Let’s get it done, and we know what it takes to get it done — get a shot in your arm,” she said during a press briefing. “I’ve done it, it’s safe, it’s effective, data proves that it works, it doesn’t cost anything, it saves lives.”

Just under 34% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.

“Folks are supposed to have common sense,” Ivey said. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that let us down.”

Louisiana’s health department issued new COVID-19 guidance Friday, recommending mask-wearing indoors regardless of vaccination status “in light of Louisiana’s troubling COVID-19 trends in cases and hospitalizations,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Twitter.

“Louisiana is undeniably in a fourth surge of COVID,” the governor said during a press briefing Friday afternoon, as the state reported 3,127 new cases. The state’s average daily cases per 100,000 residents has increased 208% over the past 14 days.

“Louisiana now has the highest growth rate in cases per capita in the United States of America. I want to let that sink in,” Bel Edwards said, attributing that to widespread transmission of the delta variant and the “very low percentage of people who have been vaccinated.”

About 48% of residents ages 12 and up have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the governor.

“That number is far below where we need to be to have the protection that we need in order to slow the spread and move toward ending the pandemic,” he said.

One encouraging sign, and one the governor noted he hopes continues, is that vaccinations have been on the rise over the past two weeks, state officials said, going from an average of 2,000 vaccine initiations per day to about 5,000 per day.

“This surge is on us,” Bel Edwards said. “How bad it gets, how long it stays bad, how many people ultimately die — on us.”

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik and Jason Volack contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(CAMBRIDGE, Md.) — While extreme heat waves, wildfires and devastating flooding bring attention to the impacts of climate change, some parts of the country are fighting more pernicious effects that threaten both protected ecosystems and important landmarks of American history.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is a wetland in the outer banks of Maryland established in 1933 as a protected area for bald eagles, osprey and several species of migratory birds. The government officials working to protect it say they can see the impacts of climate change in the refuge every day. As the ocean continues to warm and sea levels rise, the water is turning marshes into lakes and allowing invasive species to take over the ecosystem.

But the pressure to protect Blackwater is about more than just the plants and animals that live there. It also has deep roots in American history. Harriet Tubman is connected to multiple sites in the area, including the town where she was born, the general store where she was hit in the head after refusing to stop an enslaved boy from escaping and multiple locations she used when leading slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

“These are the very forests. If Harriet Tubman were here today, none of this landscape would have looked different to her at all,” said Deanna Mitchell, the superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Historical Park.

Those forests are now also feeling the impact of climate change. The trees can’t survive the saltwater intruding on the marsh, and more and more forests are dying, turning into what U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Matt Whitbeck calls “ghost forests.”

“For many people, many visitors, if they come to the refuge, they go around our wildlife drive and they look to the south and they see this big body of open water. And it’s beautiful. You know, we have pelicans out there, we get tundra swans out there in the winter, the sunsets, and it’s just lovely,” he said.

“But once you understand the factors that cause this big expanse of open water, it’s a little alarming. So when the refuge was established in 1933, that was all the vast expanse of tidal marsh. So we had black rails, we had nesting black ducks. We had all of this habitat that has since been lost to open water.”

Whitbeck said 5,000 acres of tidal marsh at Blackwater have been converted into open water since the refuge was created, and encroaching saltwater has killed acres of forests and made irreversible changes for native species. The Fish and Wildlife Service expects sea levels around Blackwater will be 3.4 feet higher in 2100 than they are now, meaning most of the marshlands visible now will all be underwater.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has worked to restore marsh areas and is researching ways to manage the ecosystem, but Whitbeck said they won’t be able to stop all of the changes they’re seeing in the marsh as sea levels continue to rise and the saltwater makes it harder for native species to survive.

Just in the last year, a team of archeologists from the Maryland Department of Transportation announced they discovered the site of a cabin belonging to Harriet Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, where Tubman lived as a child and worked with him as an adult.

The agency recently purchased the 2,600-acre property where they found the site, because they were concerned it could be completely flooded before they were able to find and preserve what remained of the property.

“Sea level rise was already beginning to take away that particular site and that history. So if we had waited, if we hadn’t been able to begin this, even a couple of years, we might never have found it. So we found it just in time in a surprise area, in an area that was definitely being impacted by sea level rise,” said Marcia Pradines, the head of restoration efforts for wildlife refuges around the Chesapeake Bay.

Pradines and other federal officials are charged with making difficult decisions about how to prioritize the fight against climate change in protected wildlife refuges, including sometimes accepting that not every impact of climate change can be stopped or that they have to adapt their approach to determine what parts of the ecosystem will be able to survive. The federal government has adopted new guidance called Resist, Accept, Direct, acknowledging that they can no longer protect the country’s natural resources from every impact of climate change.

“I am very confident that at the end of my lifetime, Dorchester County will continue to be one of the largest expanses of tidal marsh in the Chesapeake Bay,” Whitbeck said.

“The trick is what kind of marsh will it be, and what plants and animals will live in that marsh? And that’s what we’re still sorting out.”

While federal and state officials work to balance the current impacts of climate change with the parts of Blackwater they can protect, they say they are focused on preserving the history for generations to come.

“The reality is we are dealing with climate change, and we are seeing the impacts of sea level rise to some degree,” Mitchell said.

“So I would say probably by the end of the century, things will start to change in here, you know, pretty much. But while we can do it and while we have the ability, we need to try and do as much as we can to protect what we can for as long as we can.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Josh Smith, a quadriplegic, has been unable to walk or perform most activities after an accident seven years ago.

So when Smith proposed to his girlfriend, Grace on bended knee, it was a big surprise for his friends and family.

Smith was able to do so using an exoskeleton suit.

“I had this huge idea, and I didn’t know if it was even possible because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do it before,” Smith said. “So, I reached out to my therapists and told them I wanted to try to get down on one knee to propose, and I was hoping that we could use the exoskeleton to help with that.”

After he was given the green light, Smith got to work. But just like the last few years of his life, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

A life-changing injury

In August of 2014, Smith was visiting some friends in Virginia Beach when he dove into a wave head first, slamming into a sandbar. He was instantly paralyzed from the chest down.

“I was floating there face down and couldn’t move anything, but my eyes were open,” Smith said. “It took me a little bit to realize that I couldn’t move at all and then once I came to, I thought I was going to drown there.”

“It was really scary,” he added. “Luckily, my friends dragged me out onto the beach and waited for the paramedics to get there.”

At 23 years old, Smith said he realized he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

The weeks following the accident were tough for Smith. He spent up to four months at the Shepherd Center, a spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation center in Atlanta, where he worked with therapists to help him adjust to his wheelchair. Shortly after, he returned to his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, where he continued life, but forced to look through a new lens.

“Life as Josh knew it had changed in one horrific instant,” his mother , Caroline Smith said. “With his level of injury, living independently is very hard to achieve, but we worked together as a team to help him reach that goal.”

In under a year, Smith was making stride. He could drive an accessible van, work full-time, participate in adaptive sports and even invent products and tools for those, like himself, with limited motor functions. A little over two years after his injury, Smith lived in an accessible home he custom built for his needs, his mother said.

“It was kind of just my own drive that really pushed me forward to get independent and learn new things,” Smith said. “Help from my parents definitely makes things easier too.”

Although Smith said his life improving, there was one aspect of his life that he knew might not ever be the same again — dating.

“My self-confidence kind of went down the drain a little bit,” he said. “I didn’t really think anybody would want to date me, let alone marry me.”

Meeting “the one”

In February 2020, that notion changed when Smith connected with a woman named Grace Thompson on a dating app and realized they had a lot in common. Both Richmond natives, they discovered they attended the same church.

“The pandemic played a huge role in how serious we became because we went on the perfect amount of dates to where we both felt safe and comfortable not being in public anymore,” Thompson, 26, said. “We were pretty lucky in the timing of it all. It was a lot of game nights with another couple that we got close with during quarantine. We liked to cook dinners together and play games, and it was kind of nice to because, you know, we were still getting to know each other. We had a lot of great conversations and went out to parks a lot. He’s the only guy I’ve ever dated who I really work out with — which most people would be surprised at because he’s in a wheelchair — but he’s more active than most people I know.”

After being in a relationship for over a year, Smith said he knew Thompson was meant to be in his life forever. He planned a proposal which would include the use of the exoskeleton suit — made up of motorized leg braces — allowing him to get down on one knee and pop the question.

“I went to the hospital and met with a therapist twice to sort of work through the kinks and discuss how we were going to do it,” he said.

After sending Thompson off with her best friend to get a manicure, Smith made the final arrangements, waiting on the deck of his home in position while friends and family waited inside.

“It was just the easiest place for the therapist to set up the exoskeleton and things were just in a much more controlled environment,” he said. “It was a little bit less stressful.”

The proposal

Thompson said she was completely shocked to see Smith down on one knee after she took off her blindfold.

“I just kind of froze, staring at him and I felt like I couldn’t move,” she said. “Then my family and his family started pouring out and I was like, ‘Oh! It was very overwhelming but in a good way.”

“It was really cool that he was able to get on one knee, she added. “But to see him stand up — I’ve never seen him stand before, so that was really great and it was really strange to, like, have him hug me standing up! I wish we could do that more!”

Thompson said that meeting one another was meant to be, fueling her ambition to go to nursing school to help those who, like Smith, really needed it.

“There really is someone out there for everybody,” Thompson said. “And I think on my end of things, and from what I’ve learned, is to just try to be more patient and learn how and when to help him and know when he wants to do things on his own.”

The couple said they plan marry in October of next year and look forward to traveling more in the coming months.

“Everyone deserves love,” Smith said. “Sometimes you don’t know how it will come but it will always come when you’re least expecting it.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A former sales representative for a Kentucky company that marketed a performance-enhancing drug used with racehorses pleaded guilty Friday to a criminal charge stemming from what federal prosecutors in New York called a “widespread, corrupt” doping scheme.

Michael Kegley conspired with trainers, veterinarians and others to make misbranded drugs, secretly administer them to racehorses and cheat bettors in the $100 billion global racehorse industry, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Kegley marketed SGF-1000, the same adulterated and misbranded performance-enhancing drug that Maximum Security was given when he briefly placed first in the 2019 Kentucky Derby before being disqualified for interference.

The feds intercepted calls during which Kegley acknowledged he did not know the precise contents of SGF-1000, the indictment said. Kegley also was overheard explaining that trainers could be charged with felonies in the U.S. for doping horses.

“We can even put on the box, you know, ‘dietary supplement for equine,'” the indictment quoted Kegley as saying. “That way it’s not, no one even has to question, if it’s FDA approved or not.”

Kegley pleaded guilty to drug adulteration and misbranding of drugs. He faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and agreed to forfeit more than $3 million.

SGF-1000 was not approved, was mislabeled and distributed without a valid prescription, said Sarah Mortazavi, an assistant U.S. attorney.

“I knew that there was no medical description for those products,” Kegley said at a plea hearing on Friday, adding that he “knew that the product was not manufactured in an FDA facility or approved by the FDA.”

“Did you know that the trainers intended to use these products on thoroughbred racehorses?” asked Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.

“Yes, your honor,” Kegley replied.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(COLUMBIA COUNTY, N.Y.) — Dozens of children tested positive for COVID-19 at an upstate New York summer camp, health officials confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.

The site of the outbreak was Camp Pontiac, a 550-person sleep-away camp located in Columbia County, about 2 1/2 hours north of New York City. Thirty-one children ages of 7 to 11 contracted the virus, according to Jack Mabb, the county health director.

The sickened children, younger than 12, weren’t eligible to be vaccinated. About half of campers are 12 or older, according to Mabb, and all but four of them had been vaccinated.

The 275-person staff at the camp had a similarly high vaccination rate, with only three unvaccinated staffers. The sick campers were sent home to isolate, as were 130 other campers who were considered close contacts of those who tested positive.

“None were seriously ill when they left, but we can’t know if they become more ill at home,” Mabb told ABC News.

Community spread is currently low in Columbia County, according to Mabb. While staffers from the camp are permitted to go into Columbia County and have done so, there’s no evidence so far that the outbreak is affecting the wider community.

“This morning, we have only one positive and she was not associated with the camp,” Mabb said.

Camp Pontiac sent a letter to families following the outbreak, noting that the camp had “decided to test all unvaccinated campers even though the CDC and the Department of Health do not require that we do so.”

“We consider the health and welfare of our camp community our number one priority,” the letter said. “Every camper of course is welcome back after the quarantine period ends and we will happily return or rebate pro rata tuition.”

New York’s vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average. As of Thursday, 62% of residents had received at least one dose, and 56% were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, 56% of Americans have gotten at least one shot, and 49% are fully vaccinated.

ABC News’ Will McDuffie and Esther Castillejo contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.