THE COVID-19 variant that is claiming lives and infecting hundreds of people in the country today is Delta.
This was announced by the Minister of Health and Medical Services Dr Culwick Togamana yesterday during his daily national health address.
“Over the past weeks we have sent samples to Australia to test for COVID-19 variant that is in transmission in the country.
“The COVID-19 variant in transmission is confirmed as Delta.
“Fellow citizens Delta is known to be the deadliest COVID-19 variant to date meaning that people especially those unvaccinated can easily hospitalised and die from Delta,” the Minister said.
Therefore, he said it is very important that “we ensure members of our families with underlying health conditions quickly get vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccine”.
According to the UCDAVIS Health, Delta Variant is originated in India and spread around the world since June last year.
It said with the Delta variant unvaccinated people get sicker quicker while the vaccinated are either asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms if they contract the variant.
Their symptoms are likely to those of a common cold, such as cough, fever or headache with loss of smell. From yesterday, WHO world statistics on Coronavirus recorded more than 379million cases of coronavirus cases, over 5.6million deaths and about 299million recovered.