Cases and deaths resulting from COVID-19 continue to climb worldwide, mostly fuelled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, which has spread to 132 countries, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday.
The COVID-19 Delta variant is travelling around the world at a “scorching pace” driving a new spike in cases and deaths, but it’s exposing a ‘hugely uneven and inequitable’ global gap in vaccine supply, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.
After receiving reports of heart inflammation cases due to myocarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 Pfizer and Moderna shots, World Health Organization (WHO) experts on Friday said that the benefits of the vaccines still outweigh the risks in reducing hospitalizations and deaths due to infection.
Variants like Delta are “currently winning the race against vaccines” said the World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday, pinning the blame squarely on a lack of equitable vaccine production and distribution.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday urged leaders to push back against daunting new COVID surges through increased vaccination efforts and public health measures, warning that with Delta quickly becoming the dominant strain in many countries ‘we are in a very dangerous period of the pandemic’.
With cases now doubling in Africa every three weeks, the Delta variant of COVID-19 has spread to 16 countries and it is present in three of the five nations reporting the highest caseloads. The variant is the most contagious yet - up to 60% more transmissible than other variants.
