Cases of COVID-19 keep climbing in New Jersey, with another 593 cases reported on Tuesday.

State health officials say that the positivity rate in the Garden State now stands at 1.39.

Despite the increase, Gov. Phil Murphy says that he is not ready to reimpose a mask mandate. But he says that all options are still on the table.

If the governor does reimpose the mandate, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate says he is planning to resist. Phil Rizzo was the runner-up in last month's GOP primary. He lost to nominee Jack Ciattarelli by about 75,000 votes. Rizzo said on Tuesday that he believes it's time for a social resistance against the governor's pandemic orders.

“People are just following this narrative that businesses can do what they want, the government can do whatever they want. But the fact of the matter is they just can't. And so I'm not looking to be difficult, I am looking to be free,” Rizzo says.

Murphy said at Monday’s COVID-19 briefing that he is concerned about the delta variant of the virus and urged more people to get vaccinated.

The delta variant is becoming a problem in the United States and accounts for most new cases of COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The delta variant now represents 83% of sequenced cases. This is a dramatic increase, up from 50% for the week of July 3. In some parts of the country the percentage is even higher, particularly in areas of low vaccination rates,” says CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

The director says that the COVID-19 vaccine is the most powerful weapon there is against the virus.

The federal government is still under a public health emergency because of the pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services renewed the emergency for another 90 days. This will allow it to use emergency use authorization vaccines, access certain kinds of federal funding and deploy the military for trauma care purposes. The United States has been in a public health emergency since January 2020.