China COVID-19 outbreak spreads as WHO sounds alarm on Delta

Mushrooming outbreaks of the Delta variant prompted China and Australia to impose stricter COVID-19 curbs, as the WHO urged the world to contain the mutation before it turns into something deadlier and draws out the pandemic, AFP reported.

China’s most serious surge of coronavirus infections in months spread to two more areas Saturday — Fujian province and the megacity of Chongqing — in an outbreak that now spans 14 provinces.

More than 200 cases have been linked to an original Delta cluster in Nanjing city where nine cleaners at an international airport tested positive, AFP reported.

“The main strain circulating at present is the Delta variant … which poses an even greater challenge to virus prevention and control work,” said Mi Feng, spokesman for China’s National Health Commission.

The nation where the disease first emerged has rushed to prevent the highly transmissible strain from taking root by putting more than one million people under lockdown and reinstituting mass testing campaigns.

Worldwide, coronavirus infections are once again on the upswing, with the World Health Organization announcing an 80 percent average increase over the past four weeks in five of the health agency’s six regions, a jump largely fueled by the Delta variant.

First detected in India, the strain has now reached 132 countries and territories.

“Delta is a warning: it’s a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan said in the AFP report.