As WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks

By Chioma Obinna

As cases of the new, slightly altered version of the Delta COVID-19 variant known as Delta Plus spreads rapidly across the globe, the World Health Organisation weekend urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance, and practice other COVID-19 pandemic safety measures.

The warning is coming many Nigerians and countries like the United States have largely done away with masks and pandemic-related restrictions as the COVID vaccines have helped drive down the number of new infections and deaths.

The Delta Plus variant has an extra mutation called K417N, which distinguishes it from the regular Delta variant.

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According to the WHO Assistant Director-General for access to medicines and health products, Dr. Mariangela Simao, people cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses.

Simao said fully vaccinated people still need to protect themselves.

Stating this during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters, Simao said: “Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission.  People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene, the physical distance and avoid crowding.

“This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”

The health body said they are only asking fully vaccinated people to continue to play it safe because a large portion of the world remains unvaccinated and highly contagious variants, like delta, are spreading in many countries, spurring outbreaks.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that about half of adults infected in an outbreak of the delta variant in Israel were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, prompting the government there to reimpose an indoor mask requirement and other measures.

A Senior Advisor to the WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Bruce Aylward said: “Yes, you can reduce some measures and different countries have different recommendations in that regard. But there’s still the need for caution. As we are seeing, there are new variants emerging.”

WHO had earlier said the Delta variant is becoming dominant worldwide.

The WHO officials said the variant, first found in India is now in at least 92 countries, and it will “pick off” the most vulnerable people, especially in places with low COVID vaccination rates.

Meanwhile, WHO says only 10 percent of the world’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

The UN health body’s data show that the black people have been disproportionately affected by the virus, accounting for 15 percent of total deaths, and only 12.5 percent of the population. The average age of people dying from the virus has also been trending younger.

What you should know about Delta plus variant

Delta Plus, the new variant of coronavirus, has come under focus following reports of a number of newly detected cases from various parts of Maharashtra as well as a few other states.

Enough samples have not been genome-sequenced to know as only about 200 sequences were detected across the globe.

The variant was first seen in Europe in March 2021. Health Officials say the newly identified variant could potentially trigger the third wave of COVID.

Delta Plus has the mutation called K417N — first found in the Beta variant (South Africa).

Delta Plus is not yet classified as a Variant of Concern (VOC, it is still a Variant of Interest (VoI).   

Vanguard News Nigeria