Half of the total US population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the data updated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on its website.
As of Friday, 50 per cent of the US population -- more than 165.9 million people -- had been fully vaccinated against the virus. More than 193.7 million, or 58.4 per cent of all Americans, have gotten at least one dose, showed the data, Xinhua news agency reported.
The 50 per cent milestone came amid a surge in new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in parts of the US, driven largely by the Delta variant.
"America can beat the Delta variant just as we beat the original Covid-19," US President Joe Biden said at the White house on Friday, saying "it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated".
"We can do this, so wear a mask when recommended, get vaccinated today. All of that will save lives and it means we're not going to have the same kind of economic damage we've seen when Covid-19 began," he said.
Earlier this week, 70 per cent of US adults have received at least one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, a month behind President Joe Biden's Fourth of July goal. The first Covid-19 vaccine in the US was administered on December 14, 2020.
Delta threat looms over US school reopenings
For anxious parents of school going kids in the US -- especially the under 12s -- it's like 2020 all over again. The highly transmissible delta variant is a huge wild card, Covid-19 cases in children are up 84 per cent in the past week, with 72,000 kids testing positive for the virus, and the battle lines are getting redrawn, once again, between schools, government and communities.
The new infections among children were recorded in seven days leading up to July 29, up from 39,000 the week prior, according to a study out from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The troubling data are coming in as US schools are readying to open their doors for the Fall term. There's no Covid-19 vaccine yet for kids below 12 years, mask mandates are a patchwork of 50 states' political calculus, and the Delta variant is surging among the unvaccinated.
The US is now averaging over 109,000 new daily cases.
For a full year ending January 2021, CDC data showed children 15 and under had the lowest infection rates. That has changed now. School-age children between the ages of 5-11 and 12-15 have infection rates higher than adults 50 and older.
"We failed our kids all along. We're failing our kids all over again," emergency physician Leana Wen told Deadline White House.
