Nearly 600 patients wait for hospital beds in Houston as city sees surge in COVID cases

Four school districts in Georgia recently paused in-person learning as positive cases of the coronavirus among staff and students swelled in the first days of school this month.

The districts -- Macon, Taliaferro, Glascock and Talbot -- account together for less than 1% of Georgia's 1.7 million students, but the need to shut down in-person learning so early in the school year worries district officials.

"The difference now in this outbreak that we see than the outbreak that happened last school year is that this seems to be more centered on kids rather than adults, so that scares me to death," Jack Catrett, the superintendent of schools in Talbot County, told Columbus ABC affiliate WTVM.

Talbot County, which had 11 students test positive on Friday, shut its doors to students for one week, with kids returning Monday. The other three districts have planned for two-week pauses to in-person learning.

-ABC News' Will McDuffie

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said in an interview with ABC News anchor Linsey Davis Thursday that it's difficult to know whether the U.S. might see a sudden drop-off in cases, but that the best way out is by ramping up vaccinations.

"The easiest way to turn this thing around is to get as many people vaccinated as you possibly can," he said.

"Wouldn't you rather get the drop-off due to the fact that you're preventing infections rather than you've gotten so many people infected?" he later said.

Fauci said he is most worried about those who are unvaccinated, and that it was "painful" to hear of people regretting their decision not to get vaccinated and then getting ill. 

"What's absolutely certain is that the people who are vulnerable to getting severe disease, hospitalization and death is overwhelmingly the unvaccinated," he told Davis, noting that the latest data shows that 99% of people who have died of COVID-19 are unvaccinated. "That should strongly urge you to get a shot."

-ABC News' Jon Schlosberg, Anne Flaherty and Brendan Rand

Hard-hit Mississippi has requested the federal government send a military hospital ship such as the USNS Comfort, state health official Jim Craig said Wednesday.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center has 127 COVID-19 patients, including 26 children, Dean LouAnn Woodward said Wednesday. About 90% of them are unvaccinated, she said.

The dean warned, "The Mississippi hospital system will fail within the next five to seven or 10 days if the current trajectory continues.” 

-ABC News' Michelle Stoddart and Jianna Cousin

Forty-five children are in Texas Children's Hospital in Houston with COVID-19 -- an all-time high for the hospital.

Twenty-five of those children have both COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a respiratory illness that is especially dangerous for young children and older people.

Each year, RSV leads to about 58,000 hospitalizations with 100 to 500 deaths among children under 5, according to the CDC.

-ABC News' Gina Sunseri