President Joe Biden stressed the need to stay vigilant about the Delta variant of coronavirus. As the vaccination program in the United States is in full swing, death cases have witnessed a sudden drop. 

He urged people to get vaccinated and noted that “virtually all” of the deaths and hospitalisations due to Covid are among the unvaccinated.

Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2, has been spreading rapidly across the world after being detected for the first time in India in December 2020. 80 per cent of the new infections in some parts of America are due to the Delta strain, primarily in Midwestern states like Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. 

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According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), new Covid infections with the Delta variant make up for 51.7 per cent of the infections in the US.

Biden addressed his second cabinet meeting on Tuesday and lauded the vaccination program for helping to bring down COVID-19 deaths dramatically by 90 per cent in the last six months since he took the office. 

“But we have to stay vigilant, especially with the Delta variant that’s out there. While COVID-19 cases are rising, virtually all of the Covid deaths and hospitalisations are from unvaccinated people. Let me say it again: virtually all are from unvaccinated people,” he said.

That means the safest thing to do is to get vaccinated. And “that’s why we’re focusing, on our next phase, on getting the unvaccinated vaccinated,” he added.

As per the experts, the the Delta variant could affect the country in the weeks to come as the most dominant Covid strain ever. Local health officials fear the increasing number of cases among adults and children due to the Delta variant.

Biden further asserted that the US will be helping the world too while it vaccinates itself. 

“We’re going to help vaccinate the world. We’re building back better to create jobs and grow the middle class not just at home, (but) everywhere. It’s in our interests that the economies of these other nations grow,” he said.

On the US economy, Biden said it is making historic progress.

He talked about the US economy and its progress, saying, “The American people are overwhelmingly supportive of our plans — that’s the support that a lot of our friends and the other team kind of miss. The polling data shows that they strongly support our effort for infrastructure.”

Biden said his presidency is taking steps to restore American leadership in the world.

For the last four years, he said, the US has been “behind the eight ball”. He revealed he has plans to restore American leadership in the world. 

“We’ve lost a lot of our standing. I don’t have to tell that to my buddy sitting to my right here — the Secretary of State. He understands it well,” he added.

The US President said the country was in a defining competition for the second quarter of the 21st century with China and many other nations.

“Many of these nations believe that autocracy is the future, that democracies cannot compete with autocracies because it’s so hard. Things are moving so rapidly, technologically and otherwise, that democracies can’t get the act together enough to get a consensus on how to move,” he said.