the situation room. we begin this hour with america s covid-19 emergency. cnn national correspondent erika hill is following all the new developments. the aggressive delta variant is now more dominant than ever and rapidly infecting people who are unvaccinated. what can you tell us? reporter: that s absolutely right. the numbers here don t lie, jim. in fact, some 22%, nearly 73 million people in this country, 22% of the population, live in a county that s considered to have high transmission. what we know is the lower the vaccination rate in many areas, the more we are going to see some of these surges fueled by the delta variant. that is prompting new cause for concern, new calls for new americans to get vaccinated and also more concern that maybe some americans may never get the shot. dreams of a covid free summer turning to a nightmare. the delta variant now