‘Delta’ variant highly infectious

The coronavirus variant first identified in India is highly infectious and can be caught by people who have already had the disease or been only partially vaccinated, a panel of Indian government scientists said in a report published yesterday. 

Dubbed the "delta variant" by the World Health Organization, it is estimated to be 50% more transmissible than the coronavirus variant first found in Britain, researchers at Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genetics Consortium and the National Centre for Disease Control said.

They warned that "prior infections ... and partial vaccination are insufficient impediments to its spread, as seen in Delhi, and strong public health response will be needed globally for its containment."

The variant has spread to over 50 countries, including the Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that its rapid spread could affect the reopening of the economy.

India's new cases have steadily declined in large cities over the past few weeks, but rural areas remain in the grip of a disastrous second wave of infections.

The country yesterday reported 132,364 new coronavirus infections over the last 24 hours, while deaths rose by 2,713 - the lowest in over a month.

The tally of infections stood at 28.6 million, the second highest in the world, and the death toll at 340,702, the health ministry said.

Experts have warned that India needs to ramp up the pace of vaccinations to avoid future surges in infections among its population of more than 1.3 billion people.

In Nepal, the health ministry reported first death from mucormycosis or "black fungus", the highly deadly infection affecting thousands of coronavirus patients in India.

Ministry spokesman Krishna Prasad Poudel told AFP that there are now at least ten cases in Nepal, which like India has been hit by a huge Covid-19 surge.

The World Health Organization yesterday said a shortfall in Covid-19 vaccine doses going through the Covax programme in June and July could undermine the efficiency of the roll-out.

Covax was set up to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, particularly to low-income countries, and has already delivered more than 80 million doses to 129 territories.

But that is "about 200 million doses behind where we want to be", Bruce Aylward, the WHO's Covax frontman, told reporters in Geneva.

So while wealthy countries had pledged to give some 150 million doses so far -- on top of the doses Covax procures with donated funds -- that would not resolve the problem.

"We are setting up for failure if we don't get early doses," Aylward said.

On Thursday, WHO's top vaccines expert has said that immunising children against Covid-19 is not a high priority from a WHO perspective, given the extremely limited global supply of doses.

"Children are at (a) very, very low risk of actually getting Covid disease," said Dr Kate O'Brien, a paediatrician and director of the WHO's vaccines department.

"When we're in this really difficult place, as we are right now, where the supply of vaccine is insufficient for everybody around the world, immunising kids is not a high priority right now."

Canada, the United States and the European Union have all recently given the green light to some COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 12 to 15 as they approach their vaccination targets for adults.

Britain's medicines regulator yesterday said it had extended approval of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech so it can be used on 12- to 15-year-olds.

Fewer than one percent of Covid-19 vaccines administered globally have been used in poor countries.