Loop News File photo of Health Minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, and Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie. Health and Wellness Minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, is warning that the highly contagious Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus will likely be soon detected in Jamaica as the island's borders remain open. "Based on the interactions that we (Jamaicans) are having as an open society with other geographic spaces that have the Delta variant as a dominant feature of those populations, I believe it is more a matter of time before we detect that variant here," he said. "This is the nature of the virus, this is how it spreads," Tufton told Parliament's Joint Select Committee meeting on COVID-19 and other related matters on Tuesday.