Fourth Wave Of COVID-19 Hits Middle East, WHO Sounds Alarm Over Delta Variant
Only when the world was recuperating from the deadly COVID-19 outbreak, the delta variant of the virus has now wreaked havoc across the world.
Deaths reported among unvaccinated?
The variant has?triggered a fourth wave of the pandemic in the Middle East, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday, adding that the surge in Covid-19 infections and deaths is primarily being reported among people who are yet to be vaccinated.
The global health body said the highly transmissible strain, first detected in India, has been recorded in 15 out of the 22 countries and territories of the region under its purview, stretching from Morocco to Pakistan.
"The circulation of the Delta variant is fuelling the surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths in an increasing number of countries in WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Region," it said in a statement.
Infections have spiked by 55%
"Most of the new cases and hospitalised patients are unvaccinated people. We are now in the fourth wave of Covid-19 across the region," said Ahmed al-Mandhari, director of WHO's Eastern Mediterranean region.
As of the last week of July, "only 41 million people, or 5.5 percent, of the region's population, had been fully vaccinated," the WHO said.Infections have increased by 55 percent, and deaths by 15 percent, in the last month compared to the month before.
More than 3,10,000 cases and 3,500 deaths have been recorded weekly.Countries such as Tunisia, which has suffered the biggest number of Covid-19 deaths in North Africa, have been struggling to contain the outbreak.
1000 times more contagious
Critical shortages of oxygen tanks and intensive care beds have stretched the capacities of healthcare systems regionally.?WHO noted the rapid spread of the Delta variant was quickly making it "the dominant strain" in the region.
According to a recent paper in the journal Virological, the amount of virus found in the first tests of patients with the Delta variant was 1,000 times higher than patients in the first wave of the virus in 2020, greatly increasing its contagiousness.
