Biden said he didn’t expect the emerging Delta variant to force another lockdown, but added that some places “will be very hurt.”
President Joe Biden marked a milestone on Friday of 300 million vaccine doses administered in the U.S. under his administration.
But he also issued a warning, saying that Covid cases will rise in some areas with lower vaccination rates and that the highly contagious Delta variant will make unvaccinated people even more susceptible to the virus.
“People getting seriously ill and being hospitalized due to Covid-19 are those who have not been fully vaccinated,” Biden said Friday. “[The Delta variant] is a variant that is more easily transmissible, potentially deadlier, and particularly dangerous for young people.”
Biden warned that with the Delta variant, people could be more likely to die from the virus in areas with lower levels of vaccination. Biden said he didn’t expect the variant to force another lockdown, but said that some places “will be very hurt” by it.
So far, vaccinations have proven effective against the variant, which is spreading overseas and becoming more common at home. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the Delta variant made up nearly 10 percent of U.S. cases this month, compared to 2.7 percent of all cases in May.
Walensky said Friday on “Good Morning America” that the likely more harmful Delta variant will “probably” become the dominant strain in the U.S. in the coming months. Data has shown the variant, which first appeared in India, to be 40 to 80 percent more transmissible and about twice as likely to cause hospitalization as the Alpha variant.
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President Joe Biden said Friday that he didn’t expect the variant to force another lockdown but warned that some places “will be very hurt” by it https://t.co/JgAspxDvAY
— POLITICO (@politico) June 19, 2021
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