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New Jersey on Tuesday reported seven more newly confirmed COVID-19 deaths and another 792 confirmed cases, while the statewide transmission rate has risen to 1.5, the highest mark since the early days of the pandemic.

The update comes as the federal Centers for Disease Control reversed course Tuesday and said all people, including the fully vaccinated, wear masks indoors in public again in parts of the U.S. with high or substantial transmission. The agency is also recommending that everyone in K-12 schools wear face coverings.

In New Jersey, Monmouth County is listed as having high transmission, while Atlantic, Bergen, Essex, Middlesex, Ocean, and Passaic counties have substantial transmission.

Gov. Phil Murphys administration is evaluating the latest recommendation, a spokeswoman told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday afternoon, but did not make an announcement about any mask mandates returning to New Jersey.

Governor Murphy and the New Jersey Department of Health will review the new CDC guidance on masking requirements in response to the spread of the delta variant, Murphy spokeswoman Alex Altman said in an email. Governor Murphy continues to encourage all individuals ages 12 and up to receive the free and effective COVID-19 vaccination to reduce the spread of the virus.

MORE: Will N.J. indoor mask mandate return following latest CDC guidance change?

The Garden State, home to one of the nations highest vaccination rates, is still recording numbers below the pandemics peaks, with daily deaths continuously in the single digits. But officials warn that daily cases and hospitalizations have been increasing in recent days as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread, with unvaccinated people largely fueling the rise and being the most at risk.

The variant has made up 75% of the states new cases over the last four weeks based on sampling of test results, according to state date.

New Jerseys seven-day average for confirmed positive COVID-19 tests is now 726, up 59% from a week ago and 280% from a month ago, when officials were reporting record-low daily caseloads. Its the highest seven-day average since May 17.

There were 442 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 or suspected cases across New Jerseys 71 hospitals as of Monday night 23 more than the previous night and the most since June 7. Thats up 44% from a month ago.

Of those hospitalized Monday, 78 were in intensive care (four fewer than the night before), with 34 on ventilators (three fewer). There were 45 patients discharged.

New Jerseys statewide transmission rate increased Tuesday from 1.44 to 1.5 the highest number since the first few weeks of the pandemic in spring 2020, when testing was scarce. Any number over 1 indicates that each new case is leading to more than one additional case and shows the states outbreak is expanding.

The statewide positivity rate for tests conducted on Thursday, the most recent day available, was 3.84%.

Murphy said Monday that because of New Jerseys high vaccination rate, officials are relatively hopeful that hospitalizations will not return to where we were even a little more than two months ago. But officials are calling on more people to get vaccinated to help curb the spread.

Unless more of you who, for whatever reason, have not yet been vaccinated step forward and receive your doses, these risks remain, Murphy said.

Though its still possible for vaccinated people catch the virus, officials say state data shows vaccines have been widely effective in preventing infections, hospitalizations, and deaths related to COVID-19. Officials presented new data Monday showing of nearly 32,000 patients in New Jersey hospitalized with positive COVID-19 cases between Jan. 19 and July 12, more than 99% were unvaccinated.

In the same span, only 49 of the 5,400 COVID-19 deaths were of fully vaccinated people. That, officials said, means 99% of the deaths were of unvaccinated people.

More than 5.24 million people who live, work, or study in New Jersey have now been fully vaccinated, according to state data. There are more than 9 million residents in the state, including children under the age of 12, who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated.

About 70% of the eligible population is vaccinated in New Jersey, ranking seventh in country, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But inoculations have slowed in recent months and about 4 million people in the state remain unvaccinated. The vaccinations are on top of any natural immunity people may have because they caught COVID-19 and survived.

New Jersey, an early coronavirus hotspot, has now reported 26,586 total COVID-19 deaths in slightly less than 17 months 23,867 confirmed and 2,719 considered probable. Thats the most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S.

In all, the state of more than 9 million residents has reported 903,611 total confirmed cases out of more than 14.61 million tests since it announced its first case March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 131,416 positive antigen tests, which are considered probable cases.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

People 30 to 49 years old make up the largest percentage of New Jersey residents who have caught the virus (30.9%), followed by those 50 to 64 (22.3%), 18 to 29 (20%), 5 to 17 (10.1%), 65 to 79 (10%), 80 and older (4.3%) and 0 to 4 (2.2%), according to state data.

The virus has been more deadly for older residents, especially those with pre-existing conditions. Nearly half the states COVID-19 deaths have been among residents 80 and older (45.3%), followed by those 65 to 79 (33.6%), 50 to 64 (16.5%), 30 to 49 (4.1%), 18 to 29 (0.4%), 5 to 17 (0%) and 0 to 4 (0%).

At least 8,063 of the states COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data.

As of Tuesday, there have been more than 194.9 million positive COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 4.17 million people having died from complications related to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 34.5 million) and deaths (more than 611,000) than any other nation.

More than 3.9 billion vaccines have been administered globally.

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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @johnsb01.

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N.J. reports 792 COVID cases, 7 deaths. Transmission rate spikes to highest since early days of the pandemic. - nj.com

Seton Hall star Sandro Mamukelashvili is a projected second-round pick in Thursdays NBA Draft, but he says he has first-round talent.

The 6-foot-11 native of the Republic of Georgia is projected at No. 59 to the Nets in the latest ESPN.com mock, but Mamu feels he belongs much higher than that.

Im the least cockiest person, I think, he told Steve Serby of the NY Post. But in my opinion, Im one of the most underrated guys in this draft. I think I can be a top-30 player in this draft. No matter how it goes, Ill be blessed, Ill be so excited. Ill be with my family, and Ill enjoy it. But Ill definitely try to prove to everybody that I have what it takes to be one of the best players.

Mamu, who won a share of Big East Player of the Year honors this past season with the Pirates, said he wont be disappointed if hes chosen in the second round.

No, I will not be disappointed no matter how the night goes, he said. Its a celebration for my family. First, my parents coming to stay, we are al together. I had a lot of workouts. I did my best. I just can control what I can control, control the controllable.

The Nets and Knicks both have multiple picks -- including the Knicks at 58 and the Nets at 59 -- and Mamu has worked out for both local clubs.

It went really good, he told the Post of the Knicks.

[The Nets] went good too, to be honest, he added.

Still, Mamu doesnt want to be perceived as only wanting to play for the local teams -- and says hell feel blessed to play for any NBA team.

Some insiders and experts believe he is being under-valued and will be a sleeper for whoever drafts him.

New Jersey native Kevin Boyle, who coached Mamu at Montverde (FL) Academy and could make history with as many as five or six players from one school chosen on Thursday, spoke to NJ Advance Media about Mamus upside.

I think what Sandro has going for him, No. 1 hes legitimately 6-11, said Boyle, who could produce his third No. 1 pick since 2011 in Oklahoma States Cade Cunningham.

The NBA loves big guys who can stretch the floor. They have to have the 3-point shot, obviously. Secondly, he has the ability to pass and make some individual plays vs. bad four and five matchups. He may not be able to go by some threes because of his handle, but he can go by most fives and many fours. And hes big enough and hes starting to get strong enough, thats probably going to be a the center spot some so he also creates that difficult matchup for some of these bigger centers to go out and stay in front of him.

Mamu shot 43% from deep as a junior and 34% as a senior while facing many double-teams and exotic defenses.

The college guys I was talking to think hell be alright defensively, Boyle said. With his offensive skillset, hes developed nicely over the last five years. I think hes going to end up being a good pro and a good contributor. If you can shoot consistently, you can end up having a solid career.

On Draft night, Mamu hopes to hear his name called not just for himself, but for the kids at home in his native Georgia as well.

I feel like NBA gave me the platform and Seton Hall gave me a platform to reach out to these little kids who are going through a similar situation as me, and especially Georgian kids who have not a lot on their plate and are trying to make it out, Mamu told the Post.

What drives me is to be an example and be the hope for them that everything is possible. No matter how your life is, just keeping my word and keep being a good person, because I feel like being a good person will always help you in the long run, and just spreading good energy will always help you in the long run. Also, my family motivates me because I feel like theyve done so much for me.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.

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NBA Draft 2021: Despite 2nd-round projections, Seton Halls Mamu says, I can be a top-30 player in this dr - NJ.com

Maine is expected to adopt new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on mask-wearing indoors for vaccinated individuals as a resurgence of COVID-19 cases has kept the pandemic from receding.

Maine CDC director Dr. Nirav Shah told the Bangor City Council on Monday that masks are likely coming back.

We probably need to be prepared, even for fully vaccinated folks, for the time being, to go back to wearing masks in indoor settings, Shah told councilors, according to the Bangor Daily News.

The Maine CDC did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday about mask-wearing recommendations.

Meanwhile, state health officials reported 172 new cases of COVID-19 for the three-day period from Saturday through Monday, adding to an increasing level of new virus transmission. One additional death was reported Tuesday as well.

The U.S. CDC announced Tuesday that it was reversing its earlier guidance and recommending that vaccinated people resume wearing masks indoors in areas with substantial and high transmission, especially those who live with or are in close contact with immunocompromised individuals or unvaccinated people, including children under the age of 12.

Additionally, the CDC will recommend that teachers, staff, students and visitors to K-12 schools wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.

What impact the new guidelines will have is unclear.Since May, guidance has been that vaccinated individuals do not need masks because of the protection afforded by vaccines.The U.S. CDC has still recommended that unvaccinated people continue wearing masks in crowded public settings, but no one is enforcing that policy and masks have become increasingly scarce even as cases spike.

Maines new COVID-19 cases include cases for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, as the state no longer processes tests over the weekend. The new figure continues an upward trend. The seven-day daily case average, which has been rising steadily for about a month, now sits at 64 cases after bottoming out at about 14 cases on average at the beginning of the month.

Case counts are far greater than they were last summer, when people were more cautious about large gatherings and wore masks in many public settings.

The same trend is playing out across the country and is even worse in some areas where the highly transmissible delta variant has taken hold. The seven-day average in the U.S. is about 42,000 cases, up from 12,000 cases this time last month. Some states, such as Florida, are being especially hard hit.

Dr. James Jarvis, COVID-19 incident commander for Northern Light Health, said he thinks the updated mask guidance is prudent and could have some impact, even if its not a mandate.

I think there are people who have wanted to (wear masks) but have felt uncomfortable because no one else is, he said.

He said while the virus is still circulating widely, breakthrough infections in vaccinated people can happen.

Everyone who gets infected could be the source of a new variant, maybe even one that eludes our vaccinations, Jarvis said. This is how viruses work. Masks help to prevent the spread, weve known that.

Greg Dugal, director of government affairs for Hospitality Maine, which represents the states food and lodging industry, said without a mandate, though, he doesnt see much changing.

Everything that our businesses had to go through last year and earlier this year was under a state of emergency, he said. Without that mechanism, I think thats going to create some confusion. Recommendations are really gray areas.

Dugal said businesses arent equipped, and shouldnt be, to police mask wearing. The same is true, he said, of vaccination status.

Ive not been looking forward to this, he said. You knew something was going to happen.

Of the new cases reported Tuesday in Maine, 46 were in Cumberland County, which is also the county with the highest rate of vaccination. But Cumberland County also has the most people, so even though its vaccination rate is 72 percent, there are still 84,000 people who have yet to get their shots.

Since the pandemic began, there have been 70,076 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 and 898 deaths, according to data tracked by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitalizations which had been stable have started to creep back up as well. As of Tuesday there were 33 individuals in the hospital with COVID-19, an increase of eight just in the last week. Of those, 18 were in critical care.

Vaccinations, on the other hand, have slowed way down in Maine and across the country, although there are small signs demand might be increasing. In all, Maine has administered 807,540 final doses of COVID-19 vaccine, covering just over 60 percent of all residents and about 68 percent of eligible residents age 12 and older.

For the week ending Saturday, July 24, Maine averaged 1,299 shots per day, which is an increase from 1,164 shots per day on average the week prior.

Despite Maines high rate of vaccination rate overall, though, many parts of the state lag. While Cumberland County has vaccinated 72 percent of residents, nine counties have rates below 55 percent, including two Somerset and Piscataquis that still havent reached 50 percent.

The geographic disparities are even more stark in rural areas. Among those between the ages of 16-39, 70 percent of those in Cumberland County have been fully vaccinated, which is close to the overall rate. However, in five mostly rural counties Somerset, Piscataquis, Franklin, Washington and Oxford the rate among 16-39 year-olds is less than 40 percent.

Public health officials continue to stress the importance of vaccinations, even as hesitancy has hardened into hostility for some. The overwhelming majority of all new deaths and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been among unvaccinated individuals.

Jarvis at Northern Light said he hopes the recent surge leads to more vaccinations. He didnt have current numbers available Tuesday but said nearly everyone who has been hospitalized in recent weeks has been unvaccinated.

Asked if hes frustrated about the direction the state and country are heading back toward, Jarvis said yes.

People always have the choice to heed advice, but when we see the spread of misinformation, that really frustrates people in public health, he said.

This story will be updated.

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Masking expected to return in Maine, as new COVID-19 cases increase - Press Herald

Lets not argue that point, contentious and somewhat erroneous as it is. Instead, heres a question for us: Do we have to succumb?

Whats in it for us, the people, in the long run? Whats it been for any population ruled by an iron, unyielding hand for generations? Is North Korea our goal? Saudi Arabia? Party rule in China? Stalins USSR? You dream of rotting in the Gulag so you can write a book like Solzhenitsyn?

After you have killed and incarcerated people of all the religions you dislike, locked up and tortured women, turned those you consider below you into slaves, what do you imagine your life will be like? Will the Leader and his coterie share the spoils with you as you while away your days covered in ghee and khoya?

Whatever fools paradise you concoct in your head, its not going to happen. The more we do nothing or worse, do not take it seriously, when ordinary citizens, journalists, business people, investigative officers, judges are found to have been spied upon by the Government, the more you look back into the distant past to justify the State allowing the police to book anyone they wish under the National Security Act, when the police continue to use a law struck down years ago to imprison people, when the Government lies about the devastating deaths caused by a pandemic and takes vindictive action against those who reports on the sufferingall these silences add up. They rebound on you. And the consequences will be borne by all of us.

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Our silences are adding up, will rebound upon us - National Herald

Recorded calls, hacked private messages, video and microphone access: these are just some of the uses of the Pegasus spyware technology allegedly used against independent Hungarian journalists, media owners and businesspeople hostile to Viktor Orbans government.

For some, evidence uncovered by a multinational investigation led by the French non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories casts Mr Orbans Fidesz government long accused of suppressing press freedom through economic manoeuvres in a newly sinister light. For others, it confirms long-held suspicions about tactics used to suppress anti-government forces in the country.

Yet for all involved in the scandal, an even bigger question is quickly emerging: is Fideszs grip on the Hungarian media tight enough for it to be able to brush these allegations and their dire implications for freedom of speech in the country under the carpet?

While politicians and remaining independent media outlets start to refer to the Pegasus Project as a Hungarian Watergate scandal, the developments have been almost entirely absent from state-affiliated media.

As the story made international headlines on Monday morning, Hungarian state TV failed to mention allegations of state surveillance prompting comparisons with communist-era methods of authoritarian rule.

And Hungarys leading right-wing newspapers apparently felt that opposition to the countrys Gay Pride parade was more newsworthy than developments which seem to place the EU nation in the company of repressive regimes around the world.

This silence from government-affiliated media was compounded by a lack of reaction from government figures implicated by the scandal.

Hungarian law requires the nations Justice Minister to sign off on surveillance requests made for national security reasons. In 2020, justice minister Judit Varga approved 1,285 surveillance requests of various kinds.

Ms Vargas central role in surveillance puts her at the centre of the scandal but in a Facebook post on Monday, she ignored the allegations, airily describing Hungary as being at the forefront of the future of Europe while heading to an EU conference in Brussels.

Earlier, in a recent interview with Le Monde, Varga responded with outrage when asked whether she would approve a surveillance request targeting a journalist or political opponent.

She described the question as a provocation. The next day, her office requested the removal of the question, and her response, from the interview.

Yet more questions are now inevitably being asked about the extent of surveillance allegedly used by Mr Orbans government. Peter Ungar, a Hungarian Green Party politician and member of the countrys National Security Committee, has called an extraordinary meeting of the Committee to question politicians implicated in the scandal.

Using spyware software against people based on their political affiliations is an outrage, Mr Ungar told The Independent.

If even half of the allegations made in the investigation are true, the governments actions go against every Hungarian principle and law. This is proof that there are very, very few things this government will not do to hold on to power, he added.

Given Fideszs tight grip on large swathes of the national media, though, holding the government to account may be a tall order. And predictably, Mr Orbans party seems unlikely to cooperate with those looking to uncover the true extent of the surveillance.

Can this story be swept under the carpet? Im not so sure. Its getting crowded down there.

Pter Ungr, politician in Hungarys Green Party

The first government politician to respond directly to the allegations, Katalin Novak, contemptuously refused to engage with press coverage, either in this area or anything else.

Her response seemed to encapsulate the attitude of Mr Orbans government to the press in general: one that is dismissive of criticism and contemptuous of freedom.

In a recent Facebook video, Mr Orban made light of a report by Reporters Without Borders which placed him on a list of Press Freedom Predators he was filmed walking up to a traditional news stand, before asking the owner for a range of newspapers and magazines critical of the government.

Yet while mocking concerns about press freedom, Fidesz continues to avariciously acquire Hungarian media, effectively taking control of the countrys leading online news server Index.hu last year.

A blunt refusal to engage with the revelations is likely to be facilitated by a media which, for the most part, will not ask difficult questions. Ironically, Fidesz will use its control over the Hungarian press to try to sweep a national scandal about press freedom under the carpet.

The politicians will simply deny that they had anything to do with this whole affair which is ludicrous, of course, because the data was stored by the government, said Mr Ungar.

Yet as anger grows among Hungarys independent media, it remains to be seen whether the story will generate enough public anger to damage Fideszs ahead of elections to be held next year.

Opposition figures such as Mr Ungar certainly hope so. Can this story be swept under the carpet? Im not so sure. Its getting crowded down there.

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Pegasus: Reaction to surveillance scandal highlights Hungarian governments tight media control - The Independent