World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday that the delta variant of the coronavirus has triggered a fourth wave of the pandemic in the Middle East, with the increase in Covid-19 infections and deaths primarily being reported among people who have not been vaccinated.
“The rapid spread of the Delta variant across the Eastern Mediterranean Region and all other WHO regions is a major cause for concern,” said Dr Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO regional director for the eastern Mediterranean. “We are now in the fourth wave of Covid-19 across the region.”
According to WHO, the delta variant of the coronavirus has now been reported in 15 of the Middle East’s 22 countries. Unvaccinated patients make up the majority of new Covid-19 cases and hospitalised patients. The region’s low vaccination rate, combined with the delta variant of the coronavirus’s increased transmissibility, remains a major source of concern.
Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya are the countries most affected by the recent increase in Covid-19 cases in the Middle East, according to the United Nations’ public health agency (UN). “Over 310 000 new cases and 3500 deaths have been reported on average on a weekly basis during the last 4 weeks, which is a 55% and 15% increase in the number of cases and deaths, respectively, compared to the previous month,” a statement issued by the WHO media centre read.
“Admission and hospitalisation rates have increased in the last few weeks, and some referral hospitals are reaching full capacity and facing a shortage of intensive care beds and oxygen supplies,” it added.
Covid-19 management does not only include churning out vaccines that are highly effective against coronavirus disease infection, but also requires an equitable increase in the vaccination coverage, the UN body said. “Until and unless vaccination coverage is increased equitably for everybody, everywhere, the virus will continue to circulate and mutate to produce new variants,” WHO said in its statement.
Until the last week of July, only 41 million people in the Middle East (roughly 5.5 percent of the region’s population) had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. 40 percent of these vaccine doses were administered in the region’s high-income countries, which account for only 8% of the region’s population. Meanwhile, due to inequitable vaccine rollout, increased social mixing, and poor enforcement of public health and social measures, an increasing number of people across the region are becoming infected with the virus and dying as a result.
