New delta variant

New delta variant 09.08.2021
New delta variant studies show the pandemic is far from over 
The variant is not only more contagious than earlier strains, it also makes people sicker. And even vaccinated people can get infected and house similar levels of viral particles in their noses as unvaccinated people, raising concern about the vaccines’ ability to curb transmission, new data indicate. But experts caution that there’s more to infectiousness than just those viral levels in the nose.

Here are five things to know about the new delta data:

1. Vaccinated people can get infected with delta, but the vaccines are still working.

Some 350 of about 470 people, nearly 75 percent, who caught the coronavirus in a large outbreak in Barnstable County, Mass., were fully vaccinated, researchers report July 30 in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Public health officials linked many of those cases to packed indoor and outdoor events at places like bars and rental homes. The delta variant, which was first identified in India, was behind 120 of 133 analyzed COVID-19 cases, or 90 percent, in the outbreak.

But while it may sound like the vaccines didn’t do their job, the high proportion of cases in vaccinated people may be because of the county’s high vaccination rate, the researchers say; as of July 3, 70 percent of those eligible in Barnstable County are vaccinated. As more people in a community get vaccinated, the likelihood that someone who tests positive for the coronavirus has protection from the shots also goes up. That’s simply because the vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective.

Crucially, COVID-19 shots still protected vaccinated people from severe disease. While five people were hospitalized, including one unvaccinated person, as of July 27, no one had died.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 35,000 of the 162 million vaccinated people in the United States will develop a symptomatic infection every week. That’s about 21 COVID-19 cases in every 100,000 fully vaccinated people getting sick each week. That compares with about 179 infections among every 100,000 unvaccinated people per week.

As for hospitalization, two to three unvaccinated people out of every 100,000 will be hospitalized weekly with COVID-19 and roughly one person per 100,000 will die each week, according to CDC’s calculations. That’s about 25 times the number of fully vaccinated people facing the same fate. Among the fully vaccinated, 0.1 of 100,000 people will be hospitalized weekly and 0.04 per 100,000 will die each week.

2. Vaccinated people might more readily transmit delta to others, but there’s a huge caveat to that.

In that Massachusetts study, both unvaccinated and vaccinated people infected with the delta variant had similar levels of coronavirus genetic material in their noses, as measured by PCR, suggesting similar viral loads. Those elevated viral loads could mean that vaccinated people might more readily transmit delta than other coronavirus variants, despite being protected from the worst of COVID-19 themselves.

That “concerning” finding underpinned the agency’s recommendation from earlier in the week that vaccinated people wear masks indoors in certain instances, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said in a July 30 statement (SN: 7/27/21).  

Read more on https://www.sciencenews.org/


Back to the list