US President Joe Biden and the country’s top medical expert Anthony Fauci have warned about the highly infectious Delta variant that was first found in India, and which has become the dominant strain in the United Kingdom (UK).

The Delta variant now accounts for more than 6 per cent of the cases being sequenced in the US, said Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and an adviser. The actual number is expected to be higher, as the US is running the genetic sequence on a fraction of cases. In the UK it accounts for at least an estimated 60 per cent of new cases. It’s now more prevalent than the Alpha strain, formerly called the B.1.1.7, which was first identified in the UK, and transmission is peaking in people between the ages of 12 and 20, he said in a press briefing. “In the UK, the Delta variant is rapidly emerging as the dominant variant. It is replacing the B.1.1.7,” Fauci said. “We cannot let that happen in the United States,” he told CNBC. Text: NDTV