 Two persons have died from the new Delta variant of the novel coronavirus in Oyo State. One person has been isolated at a facility in Oyo and is receiving medical attention while contact tracing has begun. The Oyo State incident manager and coordinator of the Emergency Operations Center, Dr. Olabo De Ladikwo confirmed this on Tuesday. He urged Nigerians to take the COVID-19 guidelines more seriously as the virus moves through people. Dr. Olabo De Ladikwo, Oyo State COVID-19 incident manager, joins us now for insight on this new Delta variant. Good evening. Good evening, Madam. Thank you for having me. We're glad to have you. Could you please give us a quick incident report in Oyo State? Okay. In the last two weeks now we have 37 cases with three deaths. And the serverless activities at the height, we're trying as much as possible to ensure that every single case that we find, we get to their contacts, have them isolated as well, and follow up with testing after a while to see whether they too have been infected or not. As we speak now, the isolation center now in Oyo State has six clients, two isolation centers. The one at UCH and the one at Oluudu. And as we are now, we are bracing up to a chance that we'll have further numbers. But with the serverless activities going on, we believe that we should be able to map up as much as possible and perhaps break the transmission before it gets so far into the communities. Thank you. Why does this virus keep mutating? That is a normal behavior of viruses and perhaps almost all organisms in life. The issues pertaining to reproduction as well as the will to survive will make any virus try to mutate. So as to continue to fester within a given space. So yes, we've been able to see how we might beat the virus, but the virus also trying as much as possible to survive. So these are expected things that virologists have said and we are actually witnessing it. And people who are already vaccinated still susceptible to this, they are at risk also. Thank you very much. Vaccination actually does not say that there cannot be infection. What vaccination has done is to just boost the immunity as it could and allow the individual that has been vaccinated to have the strength to withstand an infective process. So when the person is infected, the severity of the disease is not as bad as it would be if the person had not been vaccinated at all. So vaccination does not actually say that someone cannot be infected. Rather, what it does is it reduce the possibility of the severe disease happening. And the symptoms different in any way from the other variants that we know and how contagious is it? The Delta variant as we have seen it is considered to be about 40 percent more contagious than the Alpha variant that was seen in England, some few months back. And if you recall that one was said to be the Alpha variant was said to be up to 80 to 90 percent more transmissible than the initial one that was witnessed in one China. So right now we are seeing a variant that is rather fast in transmission and could have some form of severity in terms of the disease outcomes. Presently from what we've been seeing in our state, most of our clients are coming down with features of diarrhea, muscle aching pain. There are some that are still having self-root and some physical loss of smell and taste. But the most striking one is the fact that people are now coming down with a lot of muscle aches and pains and diarrhea. So what would you say on a final note to, well first of all, how are you coping with it in your state? We're trying hard to ensure that the contact tracing helps in trying to limit the rate of spread. But with the numbers, it's not so much out of the expected. We're still within a comfortable way of, a comfortable zone of containment. But we hope that the numbers do not rise more than this. But on the final note, I think we will still implore the general population to go back to the protocols that were earlier set when this pandemic started in 2020 in Nigeria. The issues pertaining to social distancing, use of the face mask, hand wash, or if there are no soap and water around the use of the sanitizer. I think if we do do that, we will be able to, as much as possible, limit the transmission within the population. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Dr Olabo de Ladipo, the coordinator, incident manager and coordinator of the emergency operations center of your state. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much and thank you for having me.