Just as India has started opening up its economy in view of declining Covid-19 cases, officials from the World Health Organisation have cautioned that the delta variant now represents 99% of sequenced Covid-19 cases globally, making it more prevalent than any other strain.
The comments about the widespread prevalence of the Delta variant which was first detected in India a little less than a year ago comes amid an international increase in Covid infections driven by surging cases in Europe.
Delta is believed to be more than twice as contagious as previous variants, and studies have shown that it may be more likely than the original virus to put infected people in the hospital. People who are not vaccinated are most at risk, and the highest spread of cases and severe outcomes is happening in places with low vaccination rates.
Almost all of the up to 900,000 Covid cases sequenced worldwide over the last 60 days originated from the delta strain, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid, said during a Q&A streamed on the organization’s social media channels. Europe accounted for roughly 60% of the more than 3.3 million new cases in the world last week, Van Kerkhove said.
“Delta is really the dominant one,” Van Kerkhove said. “And there are two variants of interest – mu and lambda – that we’ve been tracking as well, but again, where delta is present, delta takes over.”
Van Kerkhove said Europe represented more than half of the just under 50,000 global Covid deaths in the last week, a 5% increase in fatalities across the Continent. Covid cases worldwide have been increasing over the last four consecutive weeks, she added.
“The pandemic is heading in the wrong direction at the moment,” Van Kerkhove said.
The decreased use of masks and social distancing are to blame for Europe’s surge, Van Kerkhove said at a briefing last week. She cautioned that societies reopening across the Northern Hemisphere this winter could lead to a rise in respiratory illnesses over the months ahead, including influenza and other pathogens.
Select European countries are bearing the brunt of the surge. Germany set a record seven-day average of nearly 39,300 new cases on Monday, up almost 40% from the week before, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
The U.K. tallied a weekly average of more than 38,500 new cases Monday, an increase of 13% from the previous week. Seven-day averages in France and Italy were both up by nearly 40% as well.