RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The city of Rio de Janeiro registers seven cases of the Delta variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The information about the new strain of the virus – more contagious than previous ones – was released this Friday night (16) by the city government. The new cases are in addition to three others identified previously.
“The Municipal Health Secretariat (SMS) of Rio de Janeiro identified four more cases in the city of influenza syndrome by Covid-19 related to the Delta variant (B.1 617.2), after genomic sequencing. Besides the three cases previously reported, another 25-year-old man, living in Manguinhos, and three other women aged 29, 65, and 47 years old, residents of Campo Grande, Bangu, and Santíssimo, have been reported. All of them are already cured,” informed the city hall.
According to the note, the three cases previously identified are 27 and 30-year-old men, residents of the neighborhoods of Olaria and Paquetá, and a 72-year-old woman, from Campo Grande.
In all, 23 contacts of the seven cases are being monitored by the Health Surveillance department, which is also monitoring the epidemiology of the pandemic in the city and, together with the State Department of Health and Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), monitoring the entry of different strains.
The Delta variant worries the health authorities because it is considered much more transmissible than the previous ones. Moreover, the percentage of people vaccinated with the second dose of the vaccine is still low in Brazil, just over 15%.
In countries where the Delta variant has already arrived, such as the United States and England, it has become predominant, causing the number of new cases to spurt upwards.