Experts say US is 'failing' to control Covid; Fauci warns against 'worse variant'
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This surge in US is believed to be caused by the Delta variant, which is dubbed as a ‘variant of concern’ and can reportedly affect adults as well as children
As the United States recorded its highest daily Covid cases on Sunday, a top public health official has warned that the country is failing to handle the situation.
"We should not really have ever got to the place we are," said Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, on a local news show. "In that regard, yes, we are failing."
His statement came as the US reported 100,000 daily seven-day average for new coronavirus cases. Total daily new cases soared to 118,999 — the highest since February.
Daily Covid-related deaths have also increased by 89 per cent in the past two weeks, and the new surge in the country has majorly targetted children.
This surge is believed to be caused by the Delta variant, which is dubbed as a ‘variant of concern’ and can reportedly affect adults as well as children.
"We would not be in the place we are right now with this Delta surge if we had been more effective in getting everybody (vaccinated)," Collins said. "Now we're paying a terrible price."
Meanwhile, the head of the White House’s Covid task force and infectious disease specialist, Dr Anthony Fauci, warned everyone that the chances of a new variant emerging can increase if the Delta variant is not controlled. The new variants, he warned "could be more problematic than Delta".
"If you give the virus the chance to continue to change, you're leading to a vulnerability that we might get a worse variant and then that will impact not only the unvaccinated, that will impact the vaccinated, because that variant could evade the protection of the vaccine," Fauci said in a local news show.