Across the world, the new confirmed cases of COVID-19 are on the rise again for the past two weeks. The spike is not uniform across all countries, with many nations showing a significant decline, too, in cases in the considered period. However, a common feature observed across most countries that are exhibiting a spike is a parallel increase in the share of the 8.1.617 variant of COVID-19, or the Delta variant , which was first identified in India last year. The effectiveness of most widely used vaccines does reduce against this variant. However, studies show that the vaccines are highly effective in reducing related hospitalisations.
Growing threat
The graph shows the rolling 7-day average of daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide. Since June 23, the global case curve has been going up again. From over 3.59 lakh cases on June 22, the new infections increased to over 4 lakh cases as of July 6.
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Mapping the latest spike
The map depicts the biweekly growth rate in new confirmed COVID-19 cases as on June 28, 2021. The rate measures the % change in the new confirmed cases over the last 14 days relative to the number in the previous 14 days.
Delta's share
The chart shows the share of COVID sequences that are the Delta variant at the end of every two-week period. It is important to note that only a fraction of all cases are sequenced. It can be seen that most countries that recorded a significant increase in the case levels (darker shade in map) also saw in parallel a surge in Delta cases.
Vaccine effectiveness
The table lists the effectiveness of select vaccines against COVID-19 infection from the Delta variant and related hospitalisation in various studies across countries. While the effectiveness reduced considerably at the infection level, hospitalisations due to the Delta variant reduced considerably after the shots.
Also read: Data | COVID-19 vaccination rate hits record pace in last 10 days of June
