Coronavirus’ Delta Variant Cripples Asian Countries; China, Thailand & Malaysia Witness Record Surge

New Delhi: Despite the imposition of tougher restrictions like curfew and partial lockdown, several Asian countries have witnessed a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in the last few days.

As per the latest reports, China is witnessing a sudden surge of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 cases with 15 cities, including capital Beijing, grappling with clusters of positive cases, with the official media calling it the most extensive domestic contagion after the virus outbreak in Wuhan.

Besides, Thailand’s daily Covid-19 cases and deaths both set records again on Saturday, as the country fights its worst surge in infections driven by the highly contagious Delta variant. Data from the Ministry of Public Health showed that Thailand’s Covid-19 caseload rose by 18,912 over the last 24 hours to 697,287, and the death toll increased by 178 to 4,857

Malaysia, on the other hand, logged 17,786 new Covid-19 infections yesterday, the highest daily spike since the outbreak, bringing the national total to 1,113,272. Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that nine of the new cases are imported and 17,777 are local transmissions. Another 165 deaths have been reported, pushing the death toll to 9,024, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Meanwhile, Japan, which is hosting the Olympic Games 2020 has declared the expansion of the Covid-19 state of emergency to the Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama and Osaka prefectures, after the country confirmed over 10,000 cases for the first time. The emergency declaration is currently in place for Tokyo and Okinawa until the end of August.

Notably, COVID-19 was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. It then spread rapidly across China and the world and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020. The overall global Covid-19 caseload has topped 197.7 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.21 million.

The  Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) data revealed that the current global caseload, death toll stood and vaccination tally stood at 197,764,668, 4,215,862 and 4,078,901,841, respectively.

(With agency inputs)

source https://www.india.com/news/world/coronavirus-delta-variant-cripples-asian-countries-china-thailand-malaysia-witness-record-surge-4856090/