The highly contagious Delta variant has been discovered to be responsible for driving the surge in new Covid-19 infections in South Africa, the health authorities and scientists have disclosed.
This is coming even as the country is reportedly condidering tighter restrictions.
The hardest-hit country in Africa recorded 18,762 new infections on Saturday — its highest daily figure since January — taking the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 1,895,905, of which 59,621 have been fatal.
‘We are in the exponential phase of the pandemic with the numbers just growing very, very, extremely fast and will keep growing in the next weeks,’ Tulio de Oliveira of the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa told a virtual briefing.
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Speaking during a briefing, Koleka Mlisana, the head of a government ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19 pointed out that ‘to curb the spread, ‘we are going to need that we go to hard, tighter restrictions… and that needs to be done urgently,‘
Health officials across the world have been alarmed by the rapid spread of the Delta variant first seen in India.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that Delta is the most contagious Covid variant and it has now reached at least 85 countries.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
