Replies to post #238529 on Biotech Values

[Biowatch]

Vaccination helps block Delta variant of Covid

If you are vaccinated, you are still less likely to get severely sick, die, or pass on a Covid infection to someone else, even if you are exposed to the Delta variant.

The problem is that the Delta variant is far more infectious, so will tend to spread widely amongst those who haven’t been vaccinated yet, and may become the dominant strain in the US in a short period of time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/health/delta-variant-covid.html

The super-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is now responsible for about one in every five Covid-19 cases in the United States, and its prevalence has doubled in the last two weeks, health officials said on Tuesday.

First identified in India, Delta is one of several “variants of concern,” as designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. It has spread rapidly through India and Britain.…

“The Delta variant is currently the greatest threat in the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate Covid-19,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said at the briefing. The good news, he said, is that the vaccines authorized in the United States work against the variant. “We have the tools,” he said. “So let’s use them, and crush the outbreak.”

… Delta, formerly known as B.1.617.2, is believed to be the most transmissible variant yet, spreading more easily than both the original strain of the virus and the Alpha variant first identified in Britain. Public health officials there have said that Delta could be 50 percent more contagious than Alpha, though precise estimates of its infectiousness vary.

Other evidence suggests that the variant may be able to partially evade the antibodies made by the body after a coronavirus infection or vaccination. And the variant may also render certain monoclonal antibody treatments less effective, the C.D.C. notes.

Delta may also cause more severe illness. A recent Scottish study, for instance, found that people infected by the Delta variant were roughly twice as likely to be hospitalized than were those infected with Alpha. But uncertainties remain, scientists said.

From the Guardian, a British newspaper:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/15/the-covid-delta-variant-how-effective-are-the-vaccines

According to figures gathered by Public Health Scotland and published in the Lancet, at least two weeks after the second dose of Covid jabs, protection against infection fell from 92% for the Alpha variant to 79% against the Delta variant for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, while for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine the protection fell from 73% to 60% respectively.

Protection against symptomatic disease has also been found to differ depending on the variant.

According to the latest figures from Public Health England (PHE), four weeks after one dose, either vaccine offered almost 50% protection against the Alpha variant. However for the Delta variant this protection was lower, with one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offering about 36% protection against symptomatic disease. For one dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine this figure was about 30%.

Two weeks after the second dose, the differences in vaccine effectiveness by variant were more modest, with the Pfizer/BioNTech jab offering 88% protection against symptomatic disease with the Delta variant, compared with 94% protection against the Alpha variant. For the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the figures were 67% and 74% respectively.