Infections with the Delta variant of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 have tripled in the last days and set health experts on alert. 18 new cases of Delta mutation have been detected recently bringing the total number to 29.
Of the 18 recently confirmed cases, 15 wee detected in Heraklio, Crete, 1 in the West Region of Athens, 1 in Thessaloniki, northern Greece and 1 at the international airport of Athens “Eleftherios Venizelos,” media reported early Wednesday evening.
In total, of the 29 Delta variant cases: 19 have been detected in Heraklio, 5 in Athens, 2 in Thessaloniki, 1 in Achaia, 1 in Corinth, 1 at entry gate (airport).
Speaking to state broadcaster ERT, Professor for Clinical Virology at the Medical School of Crete, Alexandros Zafeiropoulos said that a total of 19 cases have been detected in Heraklio. He said that Crete does not have more cases of Delta variant than other regions, what makes the difference is that they send more samples to the Genomic Surveillance institute, while in other regions the samples are random.
According to the COVID-19 Daily Surveillance Report of the National Agency for Public Health EODY issued on June 24, in the period 11 May 2021 to 16 June 2021:
From the control of 564 samples, a total of 326 samples with specialists of special interest (Variants Of Concern – VOC) and 155 samples with executives under monitoring (Variants Under Monitoring) emerged.
Out of 326 samples of VOC: 305 refer to B.1.1 .7 (Variant VOC 202012/01), 3 relate to B.1.351 / 501Y.V2 (Variant VOC 202012/02) and 18 relate to B.1.617.2 (VOC-21APR-02/Delta variant/Indian strain).
Of the 155 samples with strains under observation and 155 relate to strain B.1.1.318 (Variant E484K).
Since the launch of the National Network of Genomic Surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus until today, a total of 18,356 samples of domestic cases have been tested in the country.
Of these, 16,000 come from random sampling, 1,638 come from targeted sampling or sampling, and for 718 samples the selection method is not available.
Among the 16,000 randomly selected samples across the country, the three most common strains of special interest or under investigation that have been isolated are B.1.1.7 (Variant VOC 202012/01), with a percentage of 77.69%, followed by B.1.1 .318 (Variant E484K) with a percentage of 8.89% and B.1.351 / 501Y.V2 (Variant VOC 202012/02) with a percentage of 0.28%..
Strains/Regions
Head of National HEalth Care EODY, Panagiotis Arkoumaneas revealed on Thursday morning that the Delta variant will be the dominant strain by end of August and urged citizens to get vaccinated.
