The World Health Organization has said that being vaccinated against COVID-19 may not be sufficient enough to protect yourself from the deadly disease, adding that mask wearing, and social distancing, and other Covid-appropriate behaviours must continue.

This piece of news gains significance in light of the Delta variant (B16172) that has now spread to at least 92 countries, hence becoming a dominant variant worldwide.

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“People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing,” Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general said.

“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” she added.

According to the CDC data, 3,907 people were hospitalised with Covid after two-doses of vaccinations, but more than 1,000 of those patients were asymptomatic or their hospitalisations weren’t related to Covid-19.

Moreover, 142 of 750 deaths of fully vaccinated people after Covid, were asymptomatic or unrelated to Covid-19, according to the CDC data.

It is to be noted that many countries has lifted COVID-19 restrictions like mask wearing and social distancing.

“Yes, you can reduce some measures and different countries have different recommendations in that regard. But there’s still the need for caution,” Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor to the WHO’s director-general, was quoted as saying by CNBC.

The overall global Covid-19 caseload has topped 180.7 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 3.91 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Sunday morning, the University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 180,720,199 and 3,915,760, respectively.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 33,621,391 and 603,885, respectively, according to the CSSE.

In terms of infections, India follows in second place with 30,183,143 cases.

The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (18,386,894), France (5,830,394), Turkey (5,404,144), Russia (5,367,317), the UK (4,734,010), Argentina (4,393,142), Italy (4,257,289), Colombia (4,126,340), Spain (3,782,463), Germany (3,734,153) and Iran (3,157,983), the CSSE figures showed.

(With IANS inputs)