WASHINGTON — Top public health officials are warning about an alarming rise in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, figures that represent a bitter setback in the fight to end the pandemic. Like most other predictions about the pandemic, this one turned out to be incorrect. It is now August, and while things are not nearly as bleak as they were throughout most of 2020, the more transmissible Delta variant has prolonged the pandemic, scuttling visions of a nationwide summer reopening. Early studies indicated that the Delta variant had features that made it more transmissible than other variants of the coronavirus. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Now that the Delta variant has made landfall, people are eager to get vaccinated again.
