Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences Georgy Bazykin said that the main danger of the “delta” strain of coronavirus lies in its ability to infect more people. He told about this in an interview with Kommersant.
“Delta is spreading faster, and the faster spreading variant is capable of killing more people,” Bazykin explained.
The scientist emphasized that this strain has almost supplanted all the others: there is no more competition between “alpha”, “beta”, “gamma” and “delta”. According to Bazykin, the “delta” variant won out, as it spreads more easily among vaccinated or ill people.
“The main reason for the increase in the number of deaths is not that the virus is becoming more deadly, but that more people are sick,” he said.
The scientist stressed that the evolution of the coronavirus is likely to follow the evolution of the influenza virus: the coronavirus will accumulate new mutations, changing its properties and making the existing immunity of people less effective. He suggested that people would have to be vaccinated with modified vaccines, as is now the case with the flu.
A variant of the coronavirus, later called “delta”, was first spotted in December 2020 in the Indian state of Maharashtra. A few months later, it spread to New Delhi and its consequences were very serious: at the end of April, there were almost 30,000 new cases every day.
The “Delta” strain began to spread rapidly throughout the world. In the summer in the UK and during the most recent outbreak in Moscow, this variant accounted for more than 90 percent of all infections. By the end of August, the “delta” strain was found in 90 percent of all those infected in the EU.
Data from England and Scotland showed that Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines offer slightly less protection against symptomatic delta infections.
Science magazine wrote that delta is more likely to send unvaccinated people to hospital than alpha. Early data from the UK showed that the risk of hospitalization could be twice as high.
Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor at George Mason University Ancha Baranova said that the disease when infected with this strain develops with lightning speed: the patient is hospitalized with a slight lung injury, but after a day he gets into intensive care.
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