Officials warn of ‘race’ against Delta variant as US cases surge

White House weighs renewed mask mandates, distancing as deaths from COVID-19 rise in some US states and globally.

New COVID-19 cases are surging in parts of the United States and globally where vaccination rates are low as the highly infectious Delta variant spreads rapidly, prompting new warnings from US government officials. “As long as this virus is out there anywhere, replicating, we’re going to see more variants, and those variants are going to come back and bite us as we’re already experiencing with Delta,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a television interview on Friday. “As we are pursuing every effort to get every American vaccinated, we are also engaged in the world,” Blinken, who will travel to India next week where he will discuss expanding vaccine production, told the MSNBC news outlet.