hey guys welcome to another video the delta variant of covid or b16172
belongs to a viral lineage that originated in india during the intense wave of infections
there in april and may then it made its way to the uk in mid april when they started to
reopen the country at that time covid cases hospitalizations and deaths were dropping big time
as a result of the lockdown and excellent vaccination rates fast forward to mid-june
and the delta variant caused a third covid wave in the uk as a result the government is delaying
the full reopening until late june other countries have taken notice and are preparing accordingly
the uk is a world leader in genomic surveillance and couple that with lots of covid cases
they were able to do some great analytics in their studies
thankfully the studies were showing that the covid vaccines which in the uk
are pfizer and astrazeneca they remain effective against the delta variant as long as people had
both shots i talked more about the delta variant and the vaccine studies in this video here
so far we don't have data on the johnson and johnson in modern vaccines but we should get
that data soon presumably the moderna vaccine will have similar efficacy as the pfizer vaccine
since they're very similar mrna vaccines and they have similar efficacy against covid in general
hopefully the j j vaccine will have the same efficacy against the delta strain
as it does other strains so what about those who are unvaccinated their risk depends on
many factors you still have the usual risk factors for covid older age male type a blood high blood
pressure diabetes obesity heart disease but how does that risk change based on previous covid
strains compared to the delta variant based on the limited data so far this risk is only going up
the delta variant in scotland doubled the risk of hospitalization for those who contracted covid
the delta variant is about 60 more transmissible than the already highly infectious alpha variant
that's also known as b117 so delta variant covid cases are doubling every 11 days in the uk
in the u.s it's soaring in the midwest and the southeast there's a company in california called
helix and they are conducting nationwide genomic sampling they found that the proportion of cases
caused by alpha fell from more than 70 in late april to around 42 percent as of mid-june with the
rise of delta driving much of that shift so far data from helix suggests that the delta variant
is spreading faster in u.s counties where less than 30 percent of residents
have been fully vaccinated and that's compared to higher vaccinated counties if you look at the
country as a whole the delta variant made up ten percent of covid cases and as of the recording of
this video it's already at twenty one percent the numbers have been doubling about every two weeks
so it's likely to become the dominant strain in just a few weeks especially now that we've
lifted restrictions according to the cdc as of june 23rd two-thirds of the adult population in
the united states has received at least one dose of the covid vaccine now based on recent polls
20 of american adults say they won't get vaccinated the proportion is higher in
certain groups like younger age those who live in rural areas and white evangelical christians
the most recent models based on the delta variant being 60
more transmissible along with a predicted 75 of eligible americans getting vaccinated means
that we're probably looking at an average of 2000 plus deaths per week during the fall in
the winter then you combine that with kids less than 12 who can't get the vaccine at least not yet
will be back in school at that time and that's a bad outlook but based on that model if 86 of
americans are vaccinated that might avert over 10 000 deaths by the time you get to december
when we talk about risks with mrna vaccines talking about pfizer and moderna
we know that they can cause some side effects in the first two days that's the immune system
at work for you and there's a very small risk of allergic reactions which are almost never serious
but what about myocarditis meaning inflammation of the heart muscle
or pericarditis inflammation of the sac that covers the heart myocarditis
and pericarditis often go together so thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one