The World Health Organization's (WHO) director-general urged leaders on Friday to fight new COVID outbreaks with increased vaccination efforts and public health policies, alerting that with Delta quickly will become the dominant strain in many countries, "we are in such a deadly period of the pandemic."

"In nations with poor COVID-19 vaccine coverage, horrifying images of crowded hospitals are yet again becoming the routine." However no country has emerged unscathed,” Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus stated in his biweekly press conference.

‘Careful adjustment'

Tedros stated that the Delta variety is "extremely dangerous" and that it is constantly evolving and mutating, necessitating regular review and "careful adaptation of the public health response."

“Delta has been discovered in at least 98 countries and is rapidly spreading in both low and high vaccination coverage nations,” he cautioned.

During a question and answer session with the media, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's the technical leader for COVID-19 responses, cautioned them that now the virus has been mutating since its emergence.

“That's what viruses do. We are presently monitoring four types of concern: Alpha, Beta, Gama, and Delta. They will constantly evolve: there would be more mutations, more variations identified, but some of those will be concerning variants,” she predicts.

Dr. Van Kerkhove stated that specialists are currently following "sub-lineages" of the Delta variation and advised nations to extend their genome sequencing initiatives.

Two Options 

Meanwhile, the WHO director-general said that nations can "basically" respond to the new COVID-19 upsurge in two ways.

"Strong monitoring, targeted testing, early case discovery, isolation, and clinical care remain important public health and social measures. In addition to masks, social distancing, avoiding congested situations and keeping interior areas adequately ventilated, "He stated.

The second method, according to Tedros, is the global sharing of protective gear, oxygen, diagnostics, treatments, and vaccinations.

"I have repeatedly asked leaders around the world to collaborate to guarantee that by this time next year, 70% of all people in every country are immunized," Tedros said, adding that this would be the perfect way to slow the pandemic, save lives, drive a truly global economic recovery, and prevent further deadly variants from gaining the "dominant position."

Countries must take action

WHO is urging authorities to vaccinate at least 10% of the population in all countries as soon as feasible to safeguard health workers and those most vulnerable. As per Tedros, doing so would essentially terminate the pandemic's acute stage and save a substantial number of deaths.

"That's a challenging issue, but we believe it's doable since three billion vaccinations have already been administered." It is within a few nations' combined ability to step up and guarantee that vaccines are distributed, manufacturing is enhanced, and finances are available to acquire the necessary tools,” he suggested.

Even though some vaccine sharing is currently taking place, this is still "just a trickle," but it is being surpassed by variations. "Vaccines and other health measures are urgently needed in those nations with overcrowded hospitals," he said.

Companies must also step up their efforts

The UN health agency is also encouraging BioTech, Pfizer, and Moderna to exchange expertise and technology so that the creation of new mRNA vaccine production centres may be accelerated.

"The sooner we begin creating additional vaccination centres and increasing global vaccine capacity, the sooner we will be able to reduce dangerous outbreaks," Dr. Tedros added.

Vaccines are effective

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO's Chief Scientist, stated that while significant data has been gathered on the effectiveness of Pfizer-Biotech and AstraZeneca injections, far less has been gathered on the effectiveness of other vaccines currently in use.

WHO's regional offices are currently pushing vaccination efficacy studies and collaborating with nations to collect data so that they might convince the public that immunizations will continue to be effective against future mutations.

“The good news is that all the WHO emergency use recommended vaccinations do safeguard against developing a serious illness, hospitalization, and death owing to the Delta variant,” she recently said in a WHO video interview. Dr. Swaminathan emphasized that a complete course of vaccination is mandatory to obtain complete protection against the Delta variant.

“At the moment, none of the vaccinations available are completely protective. So, even though you're vaccinated, you can acquire the infection, but the possibilities are you'll have very minor symptoms or none at all, and your chances of becoming seriously ill are quite low,” she added.