Delta virus arrives in Colombia via US

Colombia has detected the first case of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 when the country has just been through the deadliest wave of the pandemic.

On Saturday, President Iván Duque reported that the first contagion with this variant, identified for the first time in India, was detected in “a foreign visitor” who had been in the United States and arrived in the city of Cali.

“The person presented symptoms, the next day the review was done, then the (genomic) sequencing was done and the variant was found,” Duque said in a statement to the media.

The World Health Organization (WHO) expects this lineage to become dominant in the coming months.

Until July 21, it was present in 124 countries and territories.

In Colombia, the variant was detected when “mortality, daily cases and active cases” of Covid-19 were decreasing, “Duque said.

The country went through the most critical phase of the pandemic since the detection of the first contagion in March 2020. Between the end of June and until a week ago, there were 500 deaths a day on average.

Given the high transmissibility of the Delta variant, “the message to all Colombians is: you have to get vaccinated, vaccines are massive and they are free,” added the president.