COVID-19: Delta variant likely to become dominant strain across the globe, warns WHO

As the world continues to battle against the pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that in the coming months the Delta variant of COVID-19 will become the dominant variant of the coronavirus globally. In its COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, the UN agency informed that as of June 29, 2021, 96 countries have reported cases of the Delta variant. However, the WHO also added that this is an “underestimate” as sequencing capacities needed to identify variants are limited. 

“A number of these (96) countries are attributing surges in infections and hospitalisations to this variant,” the WHO said. 

The UN agency warned that given the increase in transmissibility, the Delta variant is expected to “rapidly outcompete other variants” and “become the dominant variant over the coming months”. WHO noted that the tools that exist today to combat the coronavirus individual, community level-public health and social measures, infection prevention and control measures that have been used since the beginning of the pandemic remain effective against current variants of concern (VOCs), including the Delta variant. But the world body added that the measures may need to be maintained for a longer period of time amid the spread of the highly transmissible strain. 

"Although the increased transmissibility of VOCs (Variants of Concern) means that measures may need to be maintained for longer periods of time, particularly in a context of low vaccination coverage, these measures must be targeted, time-bound, reinforced and supported by member states," WHO added.

‘Overall decrease in number of cases’ 

Further, the UN agency informed that the cases of the Alpha variant have been reported in 172 countries, territories or areas, Beta in 120 countries (one new country), Gamma in 72 countries (one new country) and Delta in 96 countries (11 new countries). In its weekly update, WHO noted that at 521,298, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from Brazil during the June 21-27 week, followed by India (351,218 new cases, a 12 per cent increase over the previous week), Colombia (204,132 new cases, 5 per cent increase), Russia (134,465 new cases, 24 per cent increase) and Argentina (131,824 new cases, 11 per cent decrease). It added that the South-East Asia Region reported over 573,000 new cases and over 13,000 new deaths, a 5 per cent and a 33 per cent decrease respectively compared to the previous week.

"There is a slight overall decrease in the number of cases reported this week, mostly due to the decrease in the number of cases reported in India," the update said, adding that a number of countries, including Myanmar (112 per cent increase), Indonesia (60 per cent increase) and Bangladesh (48 per cent increase), reported large increases in the number of newly reported cases for this week.

"Well into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global situation remains highly fragile. While at the global level, trends in cases and deaths have been declining in recent weeks, there is significant variation by region, by country and within countries,” the update said.

(With inputs from PTI)