The head of the World Health Organization said the COVID-19 delta variant, first seen in India, is “the most transmissible of the variants identified so far” and warned that it now extends to at least 85 countries.
At a press conference on Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the lack of vaccines in poor countries exacerbated the transmission of the delta variant. He described a recent meeting he attended from an advisory group set up to allocate vaccines.
“They were disappointed because there is no vaccine to assign,” he said, criticizing rich countries for refusing to immediately share features with the developing world. “If there’s no vaccine, what do you share?”
Tedros said the global community it failed and risked repeating the mistakes made during the AIDS crisis decades ago and during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, when vaccines only reached poor countries after the outbreak ended.
“It took ten years (in antiretrovirals) to reach low-income countries after HIV high-income countries“, he said.” Do we want to repeat the same thing? “
COVAX, the effort supported by the UN with the aim of distributing vaccines poor countries, has missed several targets to share shots of COVID-19 and its largest supplier is not expected to export any vaccines until the end of the year. The hundreds of millions of doses promised by countries like Britain, the United States and others are unlikely to arrive soon.
“We have through COVAX this month zero doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, zero doses of Pfizer vaccine, zero doses of (Johnson and Johnson) vaccine“acknowledged Dr Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the head of the WHO.” Not all of our suppliers can be supplied during this period, as others are demanding these products, others are vaccinating very young populations that are not at risk. ”
As border and other restrictions public health measures WHO officials warned that this could lead to a resurgence of the disease.
“The global situation is incredibly fragile,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director of COVID-19. Van Kerkhove said that while transmission falls in Europe, there are numerous events, from major sporting events to garden barbecues, that have all the consequences of the spread of the disease.
“The delta variant, the virus, will continue to evolve,” Van Kerkhove said. “Right now our public and social health measures are working, our vaccines, our diagnoses, our therapeutic functions. But there may be a time when this virus evolves and these countermeasures don’t.”
Earlier this month, British officials announced they would allow 60,000 fans to attend the semi-finals and finals of the European Football Championships at Wembley Stadium in London, to the dismay of some public health experts.
Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick, described it as “worrying and confusing,” saying there was limited data to prove its safety, especially given the prevalence of the most infectious delta variant. “(The) inevitable opportunities for the virus to spread in enclosed spaces like toilets is a recipe for disaster.”
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Citation: WHO: The Delta variant is the “most transmissible” identified so far (2021, June 25) retrieved on June 25, 2021 at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-delta-variant-transmissible. html
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