COVID-19 vaccination in Amazonas, Brazil. Photo: VNA |
The last 24 hour has recorded nearly 400,000 new cases with more than 8,500 deaths. The US continues to be the hardest-hit country by COVID-19 with 34.4 million cases and nearly 617,000 deaths, followed by India and Brazil.
In related news, Delta, the highly contagious Covid-19 variant first identified in India, is becoming the dominant strain of the disease worldwide, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said Friday. The variant has spread to more than 80 countries and it continues to mutate as it spreads across the globe. It now makes up for most of new cases in the UK, Germany, and Russia.
The president of the World Medical Association Frank Ulrich Montgomery has called on countries to exert stronger political determination to reverse their decisions to relax preventive measures if COVID-19 cases with variant Delta keep increasing.