The United States has already applied more than 300 million doses, but Joe Biden warned that the Delta variant “will hurt” if the vaccination is slowed down

Joe Biden celebrated on Friday that more than 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have already been administered in the United States in his first 150 days in power. However, the celebration is partial, as it is unlikely that the goal he set for July 4 has been achieved.

In this sense, the US president warned that the delta variant of the coronavirus would do “a lot of damage” in certain regions of his country if the vaccination campaign, which has slowed down in recent weeks, does not advance soon. “We will have nothing to confine, but in some areas it will do a lot of damage“Biden said in statements to the White House press.

The president’s benchmark is that the vaccination rate has slowed in recent weeks, and Biden’s target is highly unlikely to be met. move towards a new normal. The president wanted 70% of adults in the country to receive at least one dose by July 4, and that proportion now stands at 65%, without going too far overnight, according to the CDC.

Meanwhile, US experts are monitoring the evolution of the Delta variant on North American territory. This variant, first identified in India and more contagious, already represents 10% of all cases of covid-19 detected in the United States, said this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the country (CDC, for its acronym in English).

Although this proportion is still low, health officials are very concerned that the situation in the UK could repeat itself, where the delta variant is already prevalent and has delayed plans to reopen that country.

“This new variant will make unvaccinated people even more vulnerable than they were a month ago,” Biden said. He added that this variant is “potentially more deadly” than others and “particularly dangerous for young people”, which worries him “seriously”.

Therefore, he begged those who have not yet done so to “get vaccinated completely”, with two doses in the case of vaccines that require it, so that the country can “celebrate the independence of the virus” as soon as possible.

In order to speed up the vaccination campaign, Vice-President Kamala Harris visited the city of Atlanta (Georgia) this Friday to try to convince the most skeptical to take the plunge., as part of a campaign that lasts the entire month of June. In this context, the Biden administration has promoted all kinds of offers from different companies, which reward vaccinated Americans with deliveries of free food, baseball tickets, or beer.

Although the vaccination rate fell in May, last week it increased by 17%, with an average of 1.33 million doses administered per day, according to newspaper calculations The Washington Post. And while health officials are concerned about the expansion of variants like the Delta, which is of Indian origin, the data in the United States remains promising: the latest weekly average of COVID-19 cases is 13,997, 6% less than the previous week and 94.4% less than in January, according to the CDC.

Anyway, United States surpassed 600,000 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to the independent count from Johns Hopkins University. Referring to the “sad step,” Biden again urged Americans to get vaccinated: “Too many lives are still being lost,” the president said.

“We still have work to do to fight this virus. And now is not the time to let our guard down. Please get vaccinated as soon as possible ”, asked the Democratic president.

The vaccination campaign also presents a great disparity according to the regions.While states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey already have more than two-thirds of their populations fully immunized, others like Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana have only fully immunized just over two-thirds of their population. ‘a third. The problem is, there is a sizable percentage of the American population who are reluctant to get vaccinated, regardless of the incentives, campaigns, and obvious benefits of vaccines.

(With information from EFE)

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