Delta Variant poses danger to more countries
As the Delta variant of COVID-19 tore through India last month, there was a lot of concern, but few answers about what would happen when it arrived in the United States.
Now that it accounts for at least 6% of this country's infections, there are a few more answers.
But it's still unclear whether Delta will go the mostly harmless way of other variants – or pose a serious threat to people who choose to skip COVID-19 shots.
"Globally, Delta is the most serious development that we know of in terms of the evolution of the virus," said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The real danger, if any, will be to people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, he and others said. "Until a few weeks ago, I would have said they're probably going to get away with (being unvaccinated)," said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. But "if Delta really takes off, that choice looks worse and worse."
Vaccinated people should remain safe, he and others said. Even if they do get infected, they're likely to get a mild case of COVID-19. But Wachter said a few new facts have made him worried about Delta's impact on unvaccinated Americans. First, he's now convinced that Delta will take over as the main cause of COVID-19 in the U.S. because it's more contagious than previous variants. It's still unclear whether Delta is also more dangerous, but early data can't rule that out, and on Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention upgraded Delta to "a variant of concern," a more serious category than it had been in before.With a virus that is more contagious, a larger percentage of the population needs to be protected through vaccination or natural infection to keep the virus from spreading.
A new study shows that vaccinated people are safe against the Delta variant – but only after they get a second dose, meaning it'll take a minimum of five or six weeks between the time someone decides to get vaccinated and when they're protected. (USA Today)
source http://www.dailynews.lk/2021/06/18/local/251916/delta-variant-poses-danger-more-countries
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