Delta Covid Variant Now Dominant Strain Worldwide, Says US Health Agency: What It Means
As the world finally started to pick up, the deadly delta variant has now gone rogue.?The Delta variant of Covid-19 has been identified to be the dominant strain worldwide, accompanied by a surge of deaths around the United States almost entirely among unvaccinated people, US officials said.
Fresh COVID surge in US
US cases of Covid-19 are up 70 per cent over the previous week and deaths are up 26 per cent, with outbreaks occurring in parts of the country with low vaccination rates, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing.
The seven-day-average number of daily cases is now more than 26,000, more than twice its June low of around 11,000 cases, according to CDC data.
The starkest uptick in cases has occurred in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada, said White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients. All those states have below-average vaccination rates.
"Pandemic of unvaccinated"
"This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Walensky said, adding that 97 per cent of people entering hospitals in the United States with Covid-19 are unvaccinated.
Walensky said an increasing number of counties around the United States now exhibit a high risk of COVID-19 transmission, reversing significant declines in transmission risk in recent months.?Around 1 in five new cases have occurred in Florida, said White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients.
The Delta variant, which is significantly more contagious than the original variant of COVID-19, has been detected around 100 countries globally and is now the dominant variant worldwide, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said.
"A formidable variant"??
"We are dealing with a formidable variant" of COVID-19, Fauci said during the call.Walensky urged unvaccinated Americans to get COVID-19 shots, and said Pfizer Inc's and Moderna Inc's vaccines have proven to be especially effective against the Delta variant.
She said people should get the second dose of vaccine even if they have passed the recommended window of time for receiving it.
Around 5 million people have been vaccinated in the United States in the past 10 days, Zients said, including many in states that so far have had lower vaccination rates.
He added that the United States has enough vaccines on hand to give booster vaccines but is still working to determine if boosters are needed.
