JAKARTA - The Delta variant of COVID-19 is now dominating the world, with a spike in deaths across the United States, almost all of them from unvaccinated people, US officials said.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky told a news conference that US COVID-19 cases had increased 70 percent over the previous week and deaths had risen 26 percent.
Outbreaks occurred in some areas with low vaccination rates, the CDC said.
According to CDC data, the weekly average number of daily infections is now more than 26,000 cases, much higher than about 11,000 cases in June.
"This is becoming a pandemic for those who are not vaccinated," he said.
He added that 97 percent of people admitted to hospital for COVID-19 were those who had not been vaccinated.
Walensky said a growing number of areas across the US were now showing a high risk of COVID-19 transmission. This development reverses the decline in transmission risk in recent months.
About one in five new cases is in Florida, according to White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients.
The Delta variant, which is significantly more infectious than the original COVID-19, has been detected in about 100 countries globally and is now the dominant variant worldwide, said US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci.
"We are dealing with a terrible variant of COVID-19," Fauci said during a telephone call.
Walensky urged unvaccinated Americans to receive a COVID-19 shot. He also claimed that the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna proved very effective against the Delta variant.
According to Walensky, the public should receive a second dose of the vaccine, even if they have passed the deadline.
About five million people in the US have been vaccinated in the past 10 days, Zients said, including many in states that have so far had low vaccination rates.
The US continued to have sufficient vaccines for a booster dose, but authorities were still trying to determine whether a third dose was necessary.
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