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Delta COVID variant now dominant strain worldwide, U.S. deaths surge -officials

Published 07/16/2021, 01:09 PM
Updated 07/16/2021, 02:05 PM
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The word "COVID-19" is reflected in a drop on a syringe needle in this illustration taken November 9, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

By Carl O'Donnell and Jeff Mason

(Reuters) -The Delta variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain worldwide, accompanied by a surge of deaths around the United States almost entirely among unvaccinated people, U.S. officials said on Friday.

U.S. cases of COVID-19 are up 70% over the previous week and deaths are up 26%, with outbreaks occurring in parts of the country with low vaccination rates, U.S. 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.

"This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Walensky said, adding that 97% of people entering hospitals in the United States with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

She 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, Zients said.

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.

"We are dealing with a formidable variant" of COVID-19, Fauci said during the call.

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Walensky urged unvaccinated Americans to get COVID-19 shots, and said Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE)'s and Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) 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.

"In the past week, the five states with the highest case rates - Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada - had a higher rate of people getting newly vaccinated," he said.

Delta outbreaks may be boosting demand for vaccinations in harder-hit states, Michael Newshel, a healthcare analyst at Evercore ISI, said in a note to clients. He added that residents of Utah and California are also seeking shots at an accelerated pace.

Zients added that the United States has enough vaccines on hand to give booster vaccines but is still working to determine if boosters are needed.

Latest comments

Here in this article, they write that the vaccines are effective against the delta variant but two weeks ago I read an article that stated that the vaccine was ineffective against the delta variant based on cases in Israel. So, which is it? Or, does it work better in some countries than in others? This is a farce of epic proportions!
Time for Texas & Florida to bail on being a part of the U.S.
"She said people should get the second dose of vaccine even if they have passed the recommended window of time for receiving it.".... how can people believe any of the garbage coming out of these people?" The vaccines are not even FDA approved and they do not even adhere to their own guidance. "Get these super duper safe and effective vaccines and you can go back to normal!" *few months later* "Okay these vaccines have just produced a more deadly variant that is preferentially spread over the original strain by vaccinated people since the vaccine puts selective pressure against the original strain...also, we known masks and lockdowns did nothing the first time around, but you better put those back on and we may lock things down again...also, the FDA has still not approved the vaccines, but has told us to put warnings about heart inflammation and auto-immune diseases on the bottles....and lets just forget about the whole deadly clots thing..."
An article about COVID deaths and they do not report the number of deaths, only the number of cases. There is a reason why, this is pure propaganda and the number of deaths is so small even with their misleading testing - which counts cases differently among vaccinated vs un-vaccinated people - that they are embarrassed to report it. The CDC changed the way they count cases in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people to produce these misleading numbers, for instance limiting PCR cycles in vaccinated people to reduce false positives and not counting asymptomatic/mild cases among vaccinated people. They are required to test all unvaccinated people entering hospitals for any reason, which produces a falsely high number of deaths among unvaccinated attributed to COVID. If they counted vaccinated and unvaccinated in same way, there would be no differential. Further vaccines are less effective against the delta variant, vaccinates are the reason the delta variant has become the dominant strain.
Because vaccinated not being tested
Double dip recession. Lockdowns coming. Vaccines dont work. Retest of march 2020 lows.
did you not read the article? 97% of people in hospital are those unvaccinated. Vaccine work, otherwise we would be in a much worse situation right now
will u grow up. u have been talking about a crash for the longest while.
Vaccines work.97% getting infected were not vaccinated.
BS. Election- Trump won
 Censoring people and hiding the facts that are coming out is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness and tyranny. Democrat or republican, neither side should fear a forensic audit...but censoring people and trying to hide the information that is coming out is a sign of foul play. If this was the cleanest election in history, let the facts come out. You all spent 4 years questioning the 2016 election without evidence, even after a multi-million dollar report concluded no Russian collusion. Hillary is still out there questioning 2016 election without evidence. They did audits after 2016 too, and you all did not cry about it.
 And just fyi, censoring people and hiding the facts that are coming out to control the narrative is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness and tyranny. Democrat or republican, neither side should fear a forensic audit...but censoring people and trying to hide the information that is coming out is a sign of foul play. If this was the cleanest election in history, let the facts come out. You all spent 4 years questioning the 2016 election without evidence, even after a multi-million dollar report concluded no Russian collusion. Hillary is still out there questioning 2016 election without evidence. They did audits after 2016 too, and you all did not cry about it.
why not join Alan Dershowitz in giving up: "Dershowitz, who was part of former President Donald Trump's legal team during his first impeachment in 2020, told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Thursday that it appeared the outcome of the last election was right."
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