VALLETTA, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Malta has detected its first case of the highly infectious Delta variant of COVID-19, the country's superintendent of public health said here on Friday.
The Delta variant, which has been classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) among the four COVID-19 variants of concern due to evidence that they spread more easily, likely caused the devastating outbreak in India.
At her weekly briefing, Charmaine Gauci said this variant was detected late on Thursday and was being investigated by the health authorities.
She said that less than half of Malta's cases were from the original strain of COVID-19, with the rest being variants.
While 48.6 percent of the cases have been of the original strain, another 47 percent were attributable to the variant first found in the United Kingdom, known as the Alpha variant, while 30 cases, equivalent to 3.7 percent, were attributable to the variant first found in Brazil, she said.
Six cases of the variant first found in South Africa were also found, equivalent to 0.7 percent of cases.
Gauci said that according to the latest figures, 541,178 people had received vaccines, with 226,341 of them being fully vaccinated. She said the health authorities were seeing the effect of vaccination since only 0.2 percent of all those vaccinated against COVID-19 had tested positive for the virus and they had very mild symptoms.
According to the latest medical bulletin, two new cases of COVID-19 were found between Thursday and Friday from 2,545 swab tests. The number of active cases has now dropped to 74. The number of deaths from COVID-19 stands at 419. Enditem
