Iran Press/ America: Delta is now the variant of the coronavirus identified third most often in California, according to new data — underscoring that the variant is highly contagious, a danger to people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Delta variant now makes up 14.5% of California coronavirus cases analyzed so far in June, up from 4.7% in May, when it was the fourth-most-identified variant in California.
In Dallas, Texas, data from UT Southwestern Medical Center shows the prevalence of the delta variant has more than doubled in samples from May 28 to June 3.
The first cases of a particularly contagious variant of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Williamson County, according to local health care officials.
The infectious COVID-19 variant first sequenced in India has shown up in Tulare County, California for the first time, the Tulare County Public Health Department reported.
Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, has said the Delta variant of Covid-19 now represents about one in five new infections in the US, describing the new strain as the “greatest threat” to the country’s efforts to quash the pandemic.
Fauci revealed that 20.6 percent of genomically sequenced Covid-19 samples in the US in the two weeks ended June 19 were the Delta variant, up from 9.9 percent a fortnight earlier and just 2.7 percent of samples in the two weeks ended May 22.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky has said that the delta variant will become the dominant coronavirus strain in the United States.
The most recent figures on the spread of the Delta variant in the US followed a concession from the White House that the country would miss Biden’s goal of having 70 percent of American adults receive at least one dose of a vaccine by July 4. The current level is 65.4 percent.
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