Biden announces new efforts to boost inoculations

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced new initiatives to get more people vaccinated as inoculation numbers continue to slow across the country and the Delta variant grows among the unvaccinated population.

Biden said the highly transmissible Delta variant, first detected in India, is already responsible for "half of all cases in many parts of this country".

"Millions of Americans are still unvaccinated and unprotected. And because of that, their communities are at risk, their friends are at risk, the people they care about are at risk," Biden said. "This is an even bigger concern because of the Delta variant."

The new initiatives are aimed at the one-third of the eligible US population that has not gotten any COVID-19 vaccine shots, focusing on providing easier access.

Biden said that by the end of the week, the US is expected to have fully vaccinated 160 million residents, more than 55 percent of the eligible population.

His administration came up short in its goal to have 70 percent of US adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4 — the current figure is 67 percent.

The new effort includes door-to-door outreach, sending vaccines to healthcare providers and pediatricians who can encourage adolescents to get shots, wider availability at pharmacies and expanding mobile clinics and vaccination sites at workplaces and securing paid time off for employees to get vaccinated.

"We are emerging from one of the darkest years in our nation's history into a summer of hope and joy,"' Biden said. "We can't get complacent now. The best thing you can do to protect yourself and your family and the people you care about the most is to get vaccinated.''

The more easily transmitted Delta variant is becoming dominant in many countries and may cause more severe disease, especially among younger people, Reuters reported.

COVID-19 cases were up in nearly half of US states, according to a USA Today analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. Alaska and Arkansas more than doubled cases in the last week. South Carolina and Kansas are up more than 50 percent.

Parts of the South, Southwest and Midwest are starting to see spikes in cases, according to CNN. Many of those states are among those with the lowest vaccination rates, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the data from the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC).

More than 80 percent of new coronavirus infections in Kansas, Arkansas, Connecticut, and Missouri are caused by the Delta variant, according to data compiled by Scripps Research's Outbreak.info, which is supported by the CDC and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

In Missouri, where the vaccination rate is 36 percent, more than 96 percent of new cases are caused by the Delta variant, according to the data released on Tuesday. In Arkansas, 34.5 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, 13 percentage points below the national average, according to the CDC. The weekly rate of 110 new cases per 100,000 Arkansas residents is the highest in the country.

CDC data also shows that recent COVID-19 case rates are an average of three times higher in states that have vaccinated a smaller share of their residents than the US overall.