President Joe Biden may have already conceded that the U.S. will fall short of reaching his July 4 goal to have vaccinated at least 70% of the adult population against COVID, but the stakes for advancing the nation’s vaccine drive remain high as the Delta variant—the highly transmissible and concerning strain of the virus that first emerged in India—swiftly makes inroads across the country.
In an analysis of genomic surveillance data released by the Centers for Disease Control last night, the Delta variant now accounts for 20.6% of America’s COVID cases, up from 9.5% in the previous two week period. The “variant of concern,” as the CDC declared it last week, is the cause of nearly half the new COVID cases in the Midwest and Upper Plains regions, according to CDC data.