Public health authorities across the US west are raising the alarm that the Delta variant, a “hyper-transmissible” form of Covid-19 responsible for about 25% of new US infections, is rapidly gaining significant ground.

Increasing cases have been reported in states with lower vaccination rates, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as per the report. 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, CDC data show. "We're already starting to see places with low vaccination rates starting to have relatively big spikes from the Delta variant. We've seen this in Arkansas, Missouri, Wyoming ... those are the places where we're going to see more hospitalizations and deaths as well, unfortunately," said Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, in an interview to a news channel. "And any time you have large outbreaks, it does become a breeding ground for potentially more variants," he said.

Currently, about 25 percent of new infections in the US have been linked to the Delta variant, up from 6 percent in early June, according to the CDC. Experts have said the best protection against the Delta variant is to inoculate more than 70 percent of the population against the virus.

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