Beijing: Number of new cases of Delta variant of Covid-19 is increasing with rapid pace in China’s Wuhan forcing the authorities to order testing of the entire population.
Wuhan is the city in China where the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was detected for the first time in December 2019.
The city of 11 million is "swiftly launching comprehensive nucleic acid testing of all residents", senior Wuhan official Li Tao said at a press conference Tuesday, a day after seven cases were found, according to AFP.
A total of 15 provinces have now confirmed cases of Delta variant. Cases in 12 of the provinces are connected to an outbreak that began in Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu province. Authorities have attributed the spread to the Delta variant and the domestic tourism season, according to BBC.
The latest outbreak in some parts of the country is attributed to tourist season. China's top respiratory disease specialist, Zhong Nanshan, expressed grave concern over the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Central China's Zhangjiajie, a tourist destination in Hunan Province where at least eight confirmed cases were found as of Sunday.
Zhangjiajie has reported a total of eight confirmed cases as of press time and at least seven cities in five provinces, including Beijing, Sichuan, Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces found COVID-19 cases linked to the tourist destination, according to Global Times.
The overall global Covid-19 caseload meanwhile has topped 198.8 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.23 million and vaccinations soared to over 4.14 billion, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
In its latest update on Tuesday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload, death toll stood and vaccination tally stood at 198,861,345, 4,234,771 and 4,145,739,667, respectively.
The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 35,129,562 and 613,670, respectively, according to the CSSE.
In terms of infections, India follows in the second place with 31,695,958 cases.
The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (19,953,501), Russia (6,230,482), France (6,218,526), the UK (5,929,880), Turkey (5,770,833), Argentina (4,947,030), Colombia (4,801,050), Spain (4,502,983), Italy (4,358,533), Iran (3,940,708), Germany (3,779,797) and Indonesia (3,462,800), the CSSE figures showed.
In terms of deaths, Brazil comes second with 557,223 fatalities.
Nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are India (424,773), Mexico (241,034), Peru (196,438), Russia (157,496), the UK (130,039), Italy (128,088), Colombia (121,216)), France (112,107) and Argentina (106,045).
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