Officials from the World Health Organization stated Tuesday that the delta variant was first identified in India less than one year ago. It now accounts for 99% of all sequenced Covid-19 cases worldwide.

Almost all of the up to 900,000 Covid cases sequenced worldwide over the last 60 days originated from the delta strain, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid, said during a Q&A streamed on the organization’s social media channels. Van Kerkhove’s remarks come as Covid infection cases are rising across the globe, with more European patients. Van Kerkhove stated that the continent was responsible for approximately 60% of more than 3.3million new Covid infections in the world.

Van Kerkhove stated that Delta is the predominant one. “And there are two variants of interest – mu and lambda – that we’ve been tracking as well, but again, where delta is present, delta takes over.”   

Van Kerkhove claimed that Europe was the source of more than half (just under 50,000) global Covid death in the week to date, an increase of 5% in deaths across Europe. The number of Covid-related deaths in Europe has been rising for the four previous weeks, Van Kerkhove said.

Van Kerkhove declared that “the pandemic seems to be heading in an unfavorable direction right now.”

Van Kerkhove stated that Europe’s rise is due to the decreased use of social distancing and masks. last week. On Tuesday, she warned that reopening societies in the Northern Hemisphere could cause an increase in respiratory diseases over the coming months. This includes influenza and other disease.