The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed Tuesday that the highly transmissible Delta variant has become the country’s most dominant COVID-19 variant among all others.
In a press conference, WHO Philippine representative Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said that the country has so far reached its highest daily tally of COVID-19 cases with 22,366 positive individuals which at the same time shows that a grim rate of transmission is mostly caused by the highly contagious Delta variant.
“We know that the most recent data from the Philippine Genome Center points to, although limited sample, it indicated that more than 70 percent of the current transmission is attributable to the Delta variant,” he explained.
Abeyasinghe, however, stressed that despite perceiving the Delta variant as the most dominant COVID-19 variant, the country’s situation does not differ with others, assuring that there is nothing to worry about.
“As we have been predicting for several weeks now, the Delta variant was expected to be confirmed in the Philippines and to establish itself as the dominant variant circulating as it has done in more than 163 other countries and so this situation is not entirely surprising,” Abeyasinghe stated.
“This is not entirely surprising. We know that the Delta variant, because of its high transmissibility, will replace the Y-type or the other variants of concern and so what we have seen here in the Philippines is not unique; that’s been seen in many other countries and so we need to see how better we can support the Philippines’ response,” he asserted.
According to the country representative, there is also a need to analyze the situation and determine the best support the WHO can do to help Philippines diminish the effect of the COVID-19 surge towards its economic stability.
“What we need to do is to see how best we can support the Philippines manage this situation, how best we can minimize the public health [risk] in economic impact of this new surge of cases which is largely driven by the Delta variant,” Abeyasinghe said.