The highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant has overtaken the other variants detected in the Philippines, the executive director of the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) said Monday.
.A relative helps a patient breathe thru a hospital plastic non-breather mask outside the Sta Ana hospital in Manila, on 16 2021. Norman Cruz
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“In the past, we had a lot of Beta and Alpha variants, but now our sequenced samples show that Delta has the most,” said Dr. Cynthia Saloma of the PCG.In a separate briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the Delta variant has been detected in nearly all regions of the Philippines.Vergeire, however, said almost half of the 338 samples subjected to genome sequencing in the latest run tested positive for the Delta variant.“It seems the Delta variant proportion, based on this initial and very rough analysis, is really going up,” she said in Filipino.During the Palace briefing, Saloma made a presentation showing a rapid increase of Delta variant cases globally from April to August this year. She said 42 percent of samples submitted to them are Delta variant cases.“The rise in Delta variant cases is fast,” Saloma said.The Philippines has recorded 807 Delta cases so far.
