A strain of COVID-19 that was first detected in the UK has spread to at least 60 countries, the WHO said yesterday, 10 more than a week ago.
With the global death toll now well past 2 million and new variants of the virus causing concern, countries around the world are grappling with how to slow infections until vaccines become widely available.
A strain in South Africa, which like the UK one is believed to be more infectious, has now been reported in 23 countries and territories, the WHO said in its weekly update.
Photo: Reuters
The number of new deaths climbed to a record 93,000 over the previous seven days, with 4.7 million new cases reported over the same period, it said.
The UK strain, first detected in the middle of last month, is thought by the WHO to be between 50 and 70 percent more infectious than the original.
While they are more transmissible, the two variants are not thought to be more deadly.
Pfizer and German partner BioNTech have said that their vaccines are effective against the mutation found on the UK virus variant, known as B117.
The arrival of mass vaccination campaigns in the US and Europe had brought hope that the end of the pandemic was in sight.
The EU on Tuesday said that it was aiming to inoculate 70 percent of its adult population before the end of August.
However, many EU countries — and other nations, including India and Russia — have struggled to get their inoculation programs off the ground.
In China, a partial lockdown was imposed on the capital, Beijing, with 1.6 million residents banned from leaving the city.
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