The ‘Delta’ COVID-19 variant that was first discovered in India is emerging as the dominant strain of the coronavirus globally because of its increased transmissibility, a top scientist has warned.
Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organisation (WHO), has also noted that this has quickly spread across the UK and was likely to become the dominant strain in the US and Germany.
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The Delta strain had badly affected India and the variant also caused England to temporarily halt its lockdown-easing measures across the country.
A UK scientist also warned on June 19, Saturday, that a third COVID-19 wave is underway in the country – triggered by a 79 per cent weekly rise in COVID-19 Delta variant cases.
Adam Finn, member, Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation told local reports that the race is on between the vaccine programme– including older people getting second doses — and the Delta variant third wave.
Meanwhile, Moscow witnessed on June 19 the second day of record number of cases with 9,120 new infections in for the past 24 hours. Of this number, the Delta variant accounted for nearly 90 per cent of cases, according to city Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
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The US Centres of Disease Control and Prevention had declared on June 18 that the Delta variant was rapidly spreading across the country, while German health officials also echoed this warning.
However, the good news was that “our vaccines work — despite the Delta strain being worrisome in regard to its hyper-transmissibility,” Rochelle Walensky told Good Morning America, while urging Americans to take the first and second jabs properly for protection from the Delta variant.” (AW)
