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EL PASO, Texas – Three cases of the highly contagious variant of Covid-19 Delta have been confirmed in El Paso, all among unvaccinated people.
The announcement came from El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser and County Judge Ricardo Samaniego during a Friday afternoon briefing.
The three variant cases involved women in their 20s, 40s and 60s, officials said.
One of the women was briefly hospitalized with the variant, while the other two experienced milder symptoms. All three have been isolated, have undergone contact tracing and have since passed the infectious period.
As a preventive measure against the spread of the variant, the two leaders have asked El Pasoans to wear face masks. (You can watch their remarks in full in the video player below.)
Additionally, El Paso City and County Health Authority Dr Hector Ocaranza urged those who had not yet done so to get immunized immediately.
“It should come as no surprise to our community that the Delta variant is now confirmed in our community. We knew it was only a matter of time, which is why it is important that members of our community get vaccinated, ”Ocaranza said. “The vaccine provides an important layer of protection for people who can become seriously ill if they contract the virus. “
Ocaranza noted that the symptoms of the Delta variant appear to be the same as Covid-19; However, he added that “doctors are seeing people get sicker faster, especially younger ones.”
Here is what we know so far about the variant.
What is the Delta variant
The Delta variant, initially known as B.1.617.2, has been around since late last year, but in recent months it has quickly become dominant in many countries. It accounts for more than 80% of new cases diagnosed in the United States, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Covid-19 cases increased by more than 300% nationwide from June 19 to July 23, 2021, along with parallel increases in hospitalizations and deaths caused by the highly transmissible variant B.1.617.2 (Delta ), “the CDC said in a health report. Alert Network alert this week.
Delta variant is more transmissible
How much more is not really clear. Estimates range from 60% more to over 200% more, depending on who is making the estimates.
A CDC document says the Delta variant is about as transmissible as chickenpox – with each infected person infecting up to eight or nine others, on average. The original strain of coronavirus, according to the CDC, was about as contagious as the common cold, with each person infected by infecting two others.
This is a difficult figure to verify, as determining it would require a lot more testing than is currently being done. People who test positive should submit samples for genomic sequencing, and this is only done in a few places in the United States.
And to compare its transmissibility to past variants, that kind of testing would have to have been done within the last few months – and it just hasn’t been done.
Everything is therefore based on estimates.
The British Infectious Disease Modelers, a group known as the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modeling, Operational sub-group, say the data indicates that the delta is 40-60% more transmissible than the B.1.1.7 or variant Alpha, which was once the dominant strain variant in the United States but has been replaced by Delta. They say it is almost twice as transmissible as the original strains of the virus first seen in China.
Delta can cause more serious illness
Hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units are once again filling with patients in parts of the United States. It may seem that the Delta variant makes people sicker, but more than 90% of people presenting for treatment are not vaccinated, according to the CDC and the hospital. officials.
So, although people are more likely to be infected with Delta in the first place if they are not vaccinated, there is not yet solid data showing that Delta causes more serious illness.
The CDC cites three older studies, from Canada, Singapore and Scotland, indicating that people infected with Delta end up in hospital more often.
What is also happening is that young people represent a larger proportion of sick people. More than 80% of Americans over 65 are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. But young Americans are not vaccinated at the same rate, so they are the ones presenting to the emergency room.
It may be more able to infect even fully vaccinated people
No vaccine is 100% effective, and many thousands of fully vaccinated people have nevertheless been infected, in what is called a breakthrough case.
The CDC on Friday released a startling study into an outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where 74% of those infected had been fully vaccinated – and four of them ended up in hospital.
The epidemic involved 469 people who caught Covid earlier this month.
“Testing identified the Delta variant in 90% of samples from 133 patients,” CDC and local health service researchers wrote in the CDC’s weekly report.
This is the first major study to contradict previous evidence that vaccinated people are almost completely immune to serious illness, even involving Delta and other variants.
This was noted in a CDC presentation made to Walensky this week.
“Vaccines prevent over 90% of serious illnesses, but may be less effective in preventing infection or transmission,” one reads. “As a result, more breakthroughs and more community spread despite vaccination.”
The CDC is now noting it on its website.
“The available evidence suggests that the currently licensed COVID-19 mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) are highly effective against hospitalization and death for a variety of strains, including Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), Gamma (P.1) and Delta (B.1.617.2), ”says the CDC.
“The data suggest lower efficacy against confirmed infections and symptomatic illnesses caused by the Beta, Gamma and Delta variants compared to the ancestral strain and the Alpha variant. Ongoing monitoring of the vaccine’s efficacy against the variants is needed. “, adds the CDC.
Tests performed in laboratory dishes had indicated that the immune response generated by the vaccines should, in theory, be strong and broad enough to cover Delta.
It may be more infectious in cases of breakthrough than previous strains
While the CDC initially told people that the vaccinated were less likely to infect others, Walensky of the CDC said this week that the Delta variant may be different.
The Provincetown study released Friday shows this. “People with Covid-19 have reported attending densely populated indoor and outdoor events at venues including bars, restaurants, guesthouses and rental homes,” the researchers wrote.
Tests on infected people have shown that fully vaccinated people have as much virus in their bodies as unvaccinated people.
“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and have raised concerns that, unlike other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta could transmit the virus. This finding is concerning and was a crucial finding leading to the recommendation of mask update from the CDC, “Walensky said in a statement.
For this reason and other evidence, the CDC now says that even those vaccinated should wear masks in areas of sustained or high transmission. This is because people who are vaccinated can be exposed and have enough virus in their body to infect someone else, even if they have no symptoms.
“The results of this survey suggest that even jurisdictions without significant or elevated transmission of COVID-19 could consider expanding prevention strategies, including masking in indoor public places, regardless of vaccination status, given the potential risk of infection when attending large public gatherings that include travelers from many areas with different levels of transmission, ”wrote the team that reported on the Provincetown outbreak.
Much of what is known comes from a study by researchers in China.
They found that the viral loads of those infected with Delta were 1,000 times higher than those of those infected at the very start of the pandemic.
Jing Lu from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues also said the virus had spread faster – in four days, compared to six days at the start of the pandemic.
People who make back of envelope claims about the properties of Delta often refer to this study alone. For example, New York University infectious disease specialist Dr Celine Gounder caused a stir when she said people could be infected with Delta in just one second of exposure, up from 15 minutes at the start of the pandemic.
It was not based on scientific observations. Gounder extrapolated from Lu’s study that she explained on Twitter.
He has unique mutations
The Delta strain has a constellation of mutations that mark it.
Each variant carries a group of different mutations. When these mutations start causing a particular virus line to behave differently or have different effects, it is tagged as either a variant of concern or a variant of interest.
Delta has at least three mutations on a structure called the receptor binding domain – the part of the virus that anchors itself directly in the human cells that it infects. They can help it evade detection by the immune system, and at least one of them can help it bind to cells more tightly.
Another mutation at a place known as the furin cleavage site – it’s on the characteristic spike protein – could also help the virus infect cells more easily, according to the American Society of Microbiology.
“The mutation is believed to increase viral infectivity and transmissibility; however, research indicates that it must occur against the background of additional mutations in the spike protein to have consequences,” ASM said.
It lacks some of the mutations that made other variants more heritable, including one called N501Y which characterizes the Alpha or B.1.1.7 variant; the Beta or B.1.351 variant; and the Gamma or P1 variant. It also lacks a mutation called E484K seen in beta and gamma.
The answer to the spread, infectious disease experts universally say, is more vaccination. “If we have more and more people vaccinated, we will win in this race,” Walensky said this week.
(CNN contributed to this report.)
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