It’s been two weeks since the health ministry confirmed the existence of the Delta variant in local Covid-19 cases, and it continuously increased to 60 per cent as of 15th of this month. Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) has since encouraged the public to go for testing at the nearest health centres, among the efforts include the mass testing exercise. Besides helping to determine the rate of Covid transmission in general, the mass testing - whose second phase is underway this weekend-aims at establishing the prevalence of the highly contagious variant. Different symptoms that show one has been infected were communicated by RBC, which should compel the symptomatic person to go for testing. Among the signs are diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, aching muscles, long lasting headache, tiredness and feeling generally unwell, blocked or running nose and sore throat. These symptoms may explain the 60% more transmissibility which implies a higher infection rate and more likely to cause hospitalisation for people who are not vaccinated. However, research proved that two doses of vaccines of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines which have been predominantly administered in Rwanda are effective against the variant, which helps the vaccinated person to not suffer its severe symptoms. Currently, there are four variants of concern that WHO is tracking around the world; The B.1.1.7 (Alpha) was first identified in the United Kingdom, the B.1.351 (Beta) which was first identified in South Africa, and the P.1 (Gamma) variant which was first identified in Japan from travellers from Brazil, and the recently classified B.1.617 (Delta) which was first identified in India.
