What is the delta variant of COVID-19?
What is the delta variant of COVID-19?
The delta variant is highly contagious. It’s more than twice as contagious as previous variants. It causes more severe illness in unvaccinated people as compared to other variants so far. It can be spread by fully vaccinated people however, they’ll spread it for less time as compared to unvaccinated people.
What is a COVID-19 variant?
Viruses are always changing, and that can cause a new variant, or strain, of a virus to form. A variant usually doesn’t affect how the virus works. But sometimes they make it act in different ways.
How do the COVID-19 Delta variants differ?
Research suggests that changes to the spike protein may make the Delta variant up to 50% more transmissible than other COVID-19 variants. For people who haven’t had the coronavirus vaccine, the Delta variant may cause more severe illness than the original strain of the virus.
Does the COVID-19 Delta variant cause more serious illness?
• Some data suggest the Delta variant might cause more severe illness than previous strains in unvaccinated persons. In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains.
Is the Mu variant of COVID-19 a ‘variant of interest’?
Although the World Health Organization continues to classify Mu as a ‘variant of interest’ globally, the CDC lists Mu simply as a ‘variant being monitored. ‘ The CDC counts 10 variants in the variant being monitored group, including three once considered variants of concern: the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma
What is the difference between a variant and a lineage for COVID-19?
Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 continuously evolve as mistakes (genetic mutations) occur during replication of the genome. A lineage is a genetically closely related group of virus variants derived from a common ancestor. A variant has one or more mutations that differentiate it from other variants of the SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
