Live breaking news: WHO to hold crisis meeting into highly infectious Delta strain

Health experts will hold a crisis meeting in the next week as authorities begin to realise the painful lessons learnt from 2020 won't apply to the highly infectious Delta strain.

A Sydney infectious diseases expert and advisor to the World Health Organisation will join a crisis meeting next week as health authorities grapple with the highly infectious Delta strain.

Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an expert in infectious diseases and epidemiology from the University of NSW, said nations were having a global meeting to discuss the highly infectious Delta strain this week.

"Across the world, particularly in the UK and the US, we are learning that the lessons we learned previously about the different strains no longer apply," she told The Project.

"At WHO we're having a special meeting in the next week about this particular variant of concern, asking all the countries that are represented on our committee to come with what they know about Delta, what they're experiencing."

Prof McLaws said medical evidence was also showing young people were now more likely to become seriously ill.

"The other thing we thought worked was that young people are not at risk. All of that seems to be wrong," she said.

It comes as NSW recorded 141 new cases of coronavirus today. 

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Originally published as Live breaking news: WHO to hold crisis meeting into highly infectious Delta strain