Health experts warn of impending global Delta surge, Sri Lanka included
COLOMBO – Health experts over the weekend warned countries including Sri Lanka of an impending COVID-19 Delta variant outbreak in the coming months, if people don’t take precautions and if they are not fully vaccinated.
“The delta variant, which played havoc in India, I’m afraid I have to say it is going to have a major impact on Sri Lanka in the coming weeks,” Professor Malik Peiris, Head of Virology at the University of Hong Kong said at a conference over the weekend.
“Sri Lanka is going to face the worst outbreak it had faced, in the months ahead,” he warned..
Peiris added that although Sri Lanka’s vaccine rollout is going well, two doses of a vaccine is needed to have a significant impact.
“In the next one or two months, [one dose alone] is not going to protect us from the impact of the delta variant so I hope the population is well advised of that,” he said.
According to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO had recorded four million COVID-19 cases worldwide in the last two weeks and it expects the number of total cases to surpass 200 million in the next weeks if the trends continue.
“We know that is an underestimate,” Ghebreyesus said in a tweet.
He confirmed that Delta was the cause of the latest infections, adding that it has currently spread in 132 countries.
WHO said the virus has been continuously changing and, so far, four variants of concern have been found and more will emerge if the virus spreads further.
WHO Sri Lanka too added that cases in Sri Lanka are rising, as was the case globally.
The organization said the rise in cases is driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, increased social mixing and mobility, inconsistent public health and social measures, and inequitable vaccine use.
“Hard-won gains are in jeopardy and health systems are being overwhelmed,” Ghebreyesus said.
The WHO also chief praised Sri Lanka’s vaccine efforts in a separate tweet.
-economynext.com