No respite from Delta scare as Covid-19 cases doubled to 20 crore in last six months globally

In the first week of August, total cases globally surpassed the 20 crore mark, doubling only in the last six months. All thanks to the highly contagious Delta variant, which has now sprawled across more than 140 countries.

More than 18 months into the Coronavirus pandemic, we are far from getting a handle on the situation. In the first week of this month, total cases globally surpassed the 20 crore mark, doubling only in the last six months. All thanks to the highly contagious Delta variant, first detected in India in February this year, has now sprawled across more than 140 countries, World Health Organisation (WHO) latest data revealed. The Delta variant is considered to be more contagious than the Covid-19 strains identified previously. DIU, a data team of India Today, has analysed data from the virus tracking database GISAID, a platform that collects information globally on Covid-19 virus genome sequencing. Data show that the Delta variant is responsible for most of the new infections in 140 countries, including the United Kingdom, USA, Russia and India. The share of variants is based on the proportion of the total number of sequences (not cases) over time. Cross-country comparisons between the spread of the Delta variant suggest that it is contributing to new Covid-19 upsurges.