Let's talk: the Delta Variant

Figure 1

With the advent of the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant being officially confirmed on the shores of our twin island republic, let's cover some bases on the virus, it's variants, vaccines and where we are now.

The image above shows the (presently) discovered variants of concern of the SARS-COV2 virus responsible for the illness termed as COVID 19. At the time of writing, there are four (4) such variants, discovered in different parts of the world, proving the "resilience" of the virus to improvise, adapt and overcome as we say, mutating to increase its infectivity and thereby maximizing it's spread.

At the time of writing, worldwide the virus has infected well over 200 million people, claiming over 4 million lives in the process. Everyday more and more is written about it, as we learn more and more with time. But core guidance stays the same, with simple things like distancing, hand hygiene and mask wearing being shown to reduce the spread.

No combination of these actions however, can be more effective than vaccination- because in vaccinating larger and larger groups of people, it decreases the rate of spread (transmission) of the virus, whilst also decreasing it's virulence (how sick it can make you). Now, medical science is not exact, meaning we cannot claim with 100% certainty that vaccination will prevent infection, but as aforementioned there is substantial evidence of it's impact on hospital admissions and deaths attributed to the virus.

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The vaccines available to us range from AstraZeneca to Sinopharm, and more recently to Pfizer. These are all of differing types:

- Adenovirus (AstraZeneca); which uses a "vector" to introduce proteins specific to the virus so that the immune system can recognize it and mount a response to it

- Inactivated (Sinopharm); which uses a weakened form of the virus to achieve the same effect as above

- RNA (Pfizer); which introduces the genetic make-up of the virus to get the body "printing" equipment to fight against it without even meeting it

These snippets below demonstrate a synopsis of the effectiveness (and side effects) of some of these vaccines:

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Now on to the real topic of discussion for this post: the Delta variant.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10243-zPqYHl6DFYWQy16R9qdh8xygMdm/view?usp=drivesdk

This link embedded above is to a new research paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine that discusses this very same topic, albeit in the United Kingdom, where it was compared to the Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant identified in the UK, specifically looking at vaccine effectiveness.

Here's a tldr for you just in case:

- Cases of Delta variant linked more to recent travel and occurred more recently

- Demographics (age, gender etc) had little difference between the two

- Vaccine effectiveness (both mRNA and Adenovirus) was lower for the Delta variant than the Alpha, but increased in those who had received two (2) doses.

This all goes to show that we should absolutely take the identification of the Delta variant seriously, and it once again highlights the importance of vaccination and the public health protocols.

To summarize, attached below is a photo reel of information from the WHO about the Delta variant.

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Thanks for reading. Comments and feedback are welcomed, please share them below.

Sources:

Figure 1- Al Jazeera

Figures 2 through 4- New England Journal of Medicine

Figures 5 through 10- World Health Organization