WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday warned that the Delta variant of COVID is soon going to be the dominant strain circulating worldwide. The variant, first detected in India, has already been detected in 104 countries. 

“The Delta variant is ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in cases and death. Delta is now in more than 104 countries and we expect it to soon be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating worldwide,” the Director-General of the World Health Organisation said in a press conference on Monday. 

“My message today is that we are experiencing a worsening public health emergency that further threatens lives, livelihoods and a sound global economic recovery. It is definitely worse in places that have very few vaccines, but the pandemic is not over anywhere,” he said.

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Ghebreyesus added that the world should battle together to put out this pandemic inferno everywhere.

In countries with low vaccination coverage, the situation is “particularly bad”, he warned, stressing that Delta and other highly transmissible variants are driving catastrophic waves of cases, which are translating into high numbers of hospitalisations and death.

“Even countries that successfully managed to ward off the early waves of the virus, through public health measures alone, are now in the midst of devastating outbreaks,” he added. 

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Ghebreyesus also stressed that vaccination offers long-lasting immunity against severe and deadly COVID-19 and said that the priority now must be to vaccinate those who have received no doses and protection.

“Instead of Moderna and Pfizer prioritising the supply of vaccines as boosters to countries whose populations have relatively high coverage, we need them to go all out to channel supply to COVAX, the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team and low- and low-middle income countries, which have very low vaccine coverage,” he said.

While tens of millions of vaccine dose donations are starting to come through, he said there is a need for more and faster.

“We need an all-out, no regrets, accelerated building up of new vaccine manufacturing hubs. For that to happen quicker, pharmaceutical companies must share their licenses, know-how and technology,” he said.