China’s spread is spreading as the WHO raises the alarm in the Delta

China is racing to control its worst coronavirus outbreak in months after health officials blamed the highly infectious Delta variant for an increase in infections involving 14 provinces.

China reported 328 symptomatic infections in July, almost equal to the total number of local cases from February to June.

“The main strain currently circulating is the Delta variant … which poses an even greater challenge to preventing and controlling viruses,” said Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC).

The spread is geographically the largest to hit China in months, challenging the country’s early success in extinguishing the pandemic within its borders after Covid-19 spread outside Wuhan.

But that record was put in jeopardy after the fast-spreading Delta variant exploded at Nanjing Airport in eastern Jiangsu province earlier this month.

More than 260 infections nationwide have been linked to the group in Nanjing, where nine cabin cleaners at an international airport tested positive on July 20th.

Hundreds of thousands have already closed in Jiangsu province, while Nanjing has tested both 9.2 million inhabitants twice.

The rise of the Delta variant combined with the peak tourist season and the high passenger traffic at the airport has led to the rapid spread of this outbreak, NHC official He Qinghua told reporters.

Fresh cases reported today in two other regions – Fujian province and Chongqing vast megacity – involved a patient visiting Xi’an resort city, Shaanxi province and an international freight crew member who recently traveled from outside, authorities said.

Officials in a Chongqing district ordered urgent mass testing late yesterday for people who had visited the sites related to the confirmed cases.

After an asymptomatic case was discovered in Zhengzhou, the epicenter of the latest deadly floods in central Henan province, city officials ordered mass testing of all 10 million residents.

The head of the city health commission was also fired.

The resort town of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province closed all 1.5 million inhabitants and closed all tourist attractions yesterday, according to an official announcement.

Health officials said the virus was likely to be brought there through the Nanjing group, according to preliminary investigations.

Officials are now trying to track down people across the country who recently traveled from Nanjing or Zhangjiajie, and have urged tourists not to travel to areas where cases have been found.

Following reports that some sick people in the latter group were vaccinated, health officials said this was “normal” and stressed the importance of vaccination alongside strict measures.

“The protection of the Covid vaccine against the Delta variant may have declined somewhat, but the current vaccine still has a good preventative and protective effect against the Delta variant,” said Feng Zijian, a virologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 1.6 billion doses of vaccine have been administered so far nationwide, the NHC said. It does not give figures on how many people have been fully vaccinated.

Health officials have said they are aiming for 80% of the population to be fully vaccinated by the end of the year.

The virus is evolving – WHO

Worldwide, coronavirus infections are on the rise again, with the World Health Organization reporting an average 80% increase over the past four weeks in five of the six health agency regions, a jump driven largely by the Delta variant.

First discovered in India, it has now reached 132 countries and territories.

“Delta is a warning: it is a warning that the virus is evolving, but it is also a call to action that we must move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” WHO Emergency Director Michael Ryan told a news conference. for the press.

He stressed that the “game plan” still works, namely physical distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene and vaccination.

But both high- and low-income countries are struggling to gain the upper hand against Delta, with extremely uneven running for hits leaving plenty of room for variants to wreak havoc and evolve further.

Meanwhile in Australia, where only about 14% of the population is affected, the third largest city of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland will enter a premature Covid-19 blockade today, as a group of the Delta variant was collected in six new cases.

“The only way to overcome the Delta strain is to move fast, be fast and be strong,” Queensland Deputy Prime Minister Steven Miles said as he informed millions that they would be under three days of strict orders. of staying at home.

The race for vaccines to triumph over the variants seems to have taken a hit after the US Centers for Disease Control released an analysis that found that people fully immunized with so-called Delta variant progression infections could spread the disease as easily as unvaccinated people.

While the strikes remain effective against serious illness and death, the U.S. government agency said in an internal document leaked by the CDC “the war has changed” as a result of Delta.

An analysis of a widespread event in the northeastern state of Massachusetts found that three-quarters of sick people were vaccinated, according to a CDC report released yesterday.

The spread was linked to the July 4 celebrations, with the latest number of infected people rising to 900, according to local reports. The findings were used to justify turning into masks for vaccinated people in high-risk areas.

“As a vaccinated person, if you have one of these progressive infections, you may have mild symptoms, you may have no symptoms, but based on what we are seeing here you may be contagious to other people,” said Celine Gounder, a infectious disease doctor and professor at New York University, told AFP.

According to the document leaked by the CDC, a summary of findings from other countries showed that while the original SARS-CoV-2 was just as contagious as the common cold, each person with Delta infects an average of eight others, making it transmissible as smallpox, but still less than measles.

Reports from Canada, Scotland and Singapore suggest that Delta infections may also be more severe, resulting in more hospitalizations.