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The World Health Organization said Thursday that the Delta variant has led to an “increase” in coronavirus outbreaks triggering a “fourth wave” in the Middle East, where vaccination rates remain low.
The world health body said the highly transmissible strain, first detected in India, has been recorded in 15 of 22 countries and territories in the region under its jurisdiction, stretching from Morocco to Pakistan.
“The circulation of the Delta variant is fueling the surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths in a growing number of countries in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region,” he said in a statement.
“Most of the new cases and hospital patients are unvaccinated people. We are now in the fourth wave of COVID-19 in the region, ”said Ahmed al-Mandhari, director of the Eastern Mediterranean region at WHO.
By the last week of July, “only 41 million people, or 5.5% of the region’s population, had been fully immunized,” the WHO said.
Infections have increased by 55% and deaths by 15% in the past month compared to the previous month. More than 310,000 cases and 3,500 deaths have been recorded each week.
In this archive photo taken on July 4, 2021, a Tunisian woman infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus receives oxygen at the Ibn al-Jazzar hospital in the city of Kairouan, in the center-east. (Fethi Belaïd / AFP)
In Israel, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz has warned Israelis to prepare for “long months” to fight the Delta variant, which is accused of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the country.
The rise in cases led Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to announce Thursday his support for the distribution of a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine to Israelis over 60 years of age.
Countries like Tunisia, which has suffered the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 in North Africa, are struggling to contain the epidemic.
Critical shortages of oxygen tanks and intensive care beds have strained the capacities of regional health systems.
WHO noted that the rapid spread of the Delta variant was quickly making it “the dominant strain” in the region.
According to a recent article in the journal Virological, the amount of the virus found in the first tests of patients with the Delta variant was 1,000 times that of patients with the first wave of the virus in 2020, greatly increasing its contagiousness.
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