COVID-19 Delta strain will evolve into new variant, the Word Health Organization’s chief epidemiologist warned on Tuesday.
The Delta variant spreads faster than the others and is now in 96 countries, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said at the ACT Accelerator Facilitation Council briefing for WHO members.
She said zero prevalence studies done around the globe show that much of the world still remains susceptible to infections, with vaccination drives “uneven and inequitable around the world.”
“We’re starting to see an increase [in infections] again, 18 months into a global pandemic, where all of us are exhausted,” she explained.
“We shouldn’t be in this position … with more than 183 million confirmed cases and 3.9 million deaths. This is certainly an underestimate of the burden.”
Van Kerkhove said there has been an increase in cases in Europe, the eastern Mediterranean region, Africa, the western Pacific, and Southeast Asia, while a decline has been witnessed in the Americas.
“But at the national level, there are more than 20 countries right now that have exponential growth … [they] have vertical or almost vertical transmission,” she said.
Recalling what had happened in Brazil and India, she said the focus is now on Nepal and Afghanistan.
