WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, has said that the Delta variant, first detected in India, is becoming the dominant variant of COVID-19 across the globe.

The COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update issued by the agency on June 15 stated that the Delta variant is being reported in nearly 80 countries across the world and another 12 countries and areas have reported the detection of B.1.617 variant, but there is no further specification of lineage at present.

The remark came only hours after Public Health England stated that the number of cases due to the Delta variant had increased by 33,630 in a week to reach 75,953 in the UK, and that the highly transmissible variant now accounted for 99% of all COVID-19 cases in the country. Meanwhile, CDC director Rochelle Walensky also said that the Delta variant is expected to become the dominant strain in the US… (ET Healthworld, June 19, 2021)