More than half of states have seen coronavirus cases climb by at least 22% over the last month — more than doubling in a handful of states — a review of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

Health officials have been cautioning Americans and state leaders for weeks not to grow complacent by relaxing or ignoring guidelines aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19. The number of new cases has been steadily inching upward for nearly a month.

Meanwhile, two pandemic-related milestones — one good, one bad — were recently surpassed: In the United States, over 200 million vaccine doses have been administered, but the global COVID-19 death toll hit 3 million.

On Wednesday, the latest day CDC numbers were available, the seven-day average for new virus cases in the U.S. was 69,577 — up 8.1% from a week before and up 31.4% over the last month.

Hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise, too. The seven-day average for deaths has increased each of the past three days, now up to 712. That’s 10.9% higher than it was a week earlier.

There were 5,507 new COVID-19-related hospitalizations Tuesday, a 4.5% increase from last week and a 15.6% rise from last month.

“Some of these increases are as a result of relaxed prevention efforts in states across the country, such as relaxed mask mandates or loosened restrictions on indoor restaurant seating,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday. “Another reason for these increases is the continued spread of highly transmissible variants — more than 50 to 70% more transmissible — which makes the race to stop the transmission even more challenging and threatens to overwhelm our health care system again in parts of this country.”

The number of new coronavirus cases is higher in 33 states than it was a month ago — and in 27 states the increase is at least 22%. 

The states struggling most to bring the virus under control are Michigan (293.1% increase), Maine (133.2%), Minnesota (122.6%), Illinois (113.6%) and Pennsylvania (90.7%).

Some states, however, continue to see new cases fall, with southern states Mississippi (48.4% decline), Arkansas (45.5%) and Alabama (43.5%) making the most progress over the past month.

The number of deaths worldwide as of Friday afternoon was 2.99 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has recorded the most virus-related deaths since the pandemic began with 565,435, followed by Brazil (365,444), Mexico (211,213) and India (174,308). 

But as of Thursday morning, the U.S. had administered 198.3 million vaccine doses, according to the CDC, a sign that the end of the pandemic could be in sight. Nearly 126 million Americans, about 38% of the population, have received at least one dose, and 78.5 million (23.6% of the population) are fully vaccinated.

Nearly half of all American adults (48.3%) have been given at least one dose, while 30.3% are fully inoculated.  Eighty percent of Americans ages 65 and older have received one shot, and nearly two-thirds (63.7%) are fully vaccinated.  

“But we must continue to get many more people vaccinated,” Dr. Walensky said. “The increasing trends in cases, hospitalizations and deaths are very concerning, and they threaten the progress we've already made.”

President Joe Biden’s deadline for states to make all adults eligible for vaccines is Monday.