Biden urges unvaccinated Americans to get a jab

Washington: US President Joe Biden has urged the unvaccinated Americans to get a jab sooner as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to pose a threat to the country's economic recovery.

"My message today is not one of celebration. It's one to remind us we got a lot of hard work left to be done both to beat the Delta variant and to continue our advance of economic recovery," Biden said from the White House on Friday following the release of a July employment report which showed nearly 1 million jobs were added to the economy.

"America can beat the Delta variant just as we beat the original Covid-19," Xinhua news agency quoted the President as saying.

"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.

"Because of our success with the vaccination effort, this new Delta variant wave of COVID-19 will be very different.

"Yes, cases are going to go up before they come back down. It's a pandemic of the unvaccinated... It's taking a needless toll on our country," Biden added.

The country is witnessing a resurgence of new Covid-19 cases attributed to the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant while millions of Americans remain unvaccinated.

Following Biden's remarks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that 50 per cent of the US population, more than 165.9 million people, have 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, the CDC said.

Earlier this week, 70 per cent of US adults had received at least one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, a month behind President Biden's Fourth of July goal.

The first Covid-19 vaccine in the US was administered on December 14, 2020.