Good morning and welcome to way too early, the show that's been shouting at the TV way too much lately.

Gotta love the Olympics. I'm Elise Jordan on this Tuesday, July 27th. We'll start with the news.

As the nation faces an explosive growth of COVID-19 cases from virus variants, new vaccine mandates are being rolled out across the country.

California and New York City are now requiring vaccinations or weekly testing for all of their employees. And the Department

of Veteran Affairs is now the first federal agency to issue a vaccine mandate, which would require

frontline workers to receive COVID vaccine shots.

Some experts say these moves could signal a pivot towards implementing national mandates.

NBC News, Miguel Al-Migwar has the latest.

Well before any fall surge, some hospitals across the nation are already struggling to manage the 60,000 new daily COVID infections plaguing the U.S.

As ICUs fill up, some models suggest our nation could see upwards of 4,000 deaths a day by October, the 100 million Americans who are unvaccinated, driving the numbers

and the risk, even for those who are inoculating. If you allow the virus to freely circulate

because so many people are unvaccinated, you give it yet again another opportunity to mutate

even more, and you may wind up with creating a

variant that in fact is eludes the protection of the vaccine. As new inoculations plateau,

Pfizer and Moderna at the FDA's urging are expanding the size of their vaccine studies in children

5 to 11 amid rare reports of heart

inflammation in younger Americans, a precautionary move, like the idea of bringing back masks

indoors nationwide, said to be under active consideration. St. Louis County joining Savannah, Georgia

in re-implementing the policy.

These numbers are too alarming to ignore. As major medical organizations say vaccination should be

mandatory for health care workers, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal

agency to require vaccinations for medical staff.

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