‘Not too worried’: As delta variant spreads, some tourists in D.C. remain unfazed Nicole Asbury Even as the delta variant of the coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, D.C. tourists and residents remained mostly unbothered Sunday as they shopped and toured along the National Mall. The highly transmissible variant accounts for 83.2 percent of all new infections in the country, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some cities, including Los Angeles and St. Louis, have revived their mask mandates to slow the rate of transmission. But on the Mall on Sunday afternoon, most of those in the crowd were without masks. The area was once quiet as the original coronavirus spread across the District at the beginning of the pandemic early last year, shutting down museums and other locations popular with tourists, but it has started to return to its typical capacity since the city lifted its shutdown measu