‘Delta Plus’ variant has spread to nearly 30 countries, but low number of cases is a sign it won’t overtake Delta

• The Delta Plus variant, present in dozens of countries, is the Delta variant with an additional mutation.

• It is not yet clear whether Delta Plus is more transmissible than Delta.

• The fact that Delta remains dominant around the world, however, is a sign that Delta Plus won’t overtake it anytime soon.

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As the Delta coronavirus variant tears apart across the world, scientists are keeping a close watch on its parent: Delta Plus.

The two variants are genetically similar, which is why they share the same Greek letter. But Delta Plus (also known as AY.1) has one more mutation in the code for its spike protein, which helps the coronavirus gain access to our cells.

India’s health ministry said last month that Delta Plus appeared to spread more easily than Delta and may be able to bind to lung cells more easily or resist drug antibodies. But an Indian genomics consortium suggested more recently that Delta’s sublines were probably no more transmissible than Delta. As of July 23, India had only registered 70 Delta Plus cases.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization are tracking Delta Plus as part of the Delta variant, which means the cases are not separated. But data from Scripps Research’s Outbreak.info tracker suggests that only 430 Delta Plus cases have been detected worldwide.

South Korea said on Tuesday it had registered its first two cases of Delta Plus. The country is seeing its strongest wave of infections to date, possibly due to the original Delta strain.

“It doesn’t terrify me any more, really, than Delta,” said Andrew Read, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies the evolution of infectious diseases, of Delta Plus.

Although Delta Plus has made its way into at least 29 countries and 17 US states, Read noted that “the pervasive geographic nature does not mean that it is something that is spreading widely.”

“It could be that these are several independent events that are spreading locally,” he said.

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In the United States, Delta Plus cases peaked in late June at less than 5% of sequenced cases in the country, according to Outbreak.info. Health experts say it’s a sign Delta Plus isn’t outperforming other variants.

“If it started to increase in frequency compared to the Delta variant, it would tell you that it might be on the right track to take over from Delta – but we don’t really see that at the moment,” he said. said Read. “If he had a big advantage, we would see him ramp up pretty quickly.”

Scientists don’t know how Delta Plus vaccines perform

For Delta Plus to be a serious concern, scientists would need evidence that it is more transmissible than Delta, causes more severe disease, or is more resistant to protection from vaccines.

“I could imagine that, because the mutation is in the peak [protein], it could have some advantages in terms of immune evasion and some drawbacks in terms of binding to the ACE2 receptor, ”Read said. This receptor serves as the gateway for the coronavirus.

But Public Health England told Insider in June that there was no evidence that the additional mutation in Delta Plus makes the virus more serious or reduces the vaccine’s effectiveness compared to Delta.

While Delta appears to have questioned the ability of vaccines to prevent infection and transmission, recent data from the CDC indicates coronavirus injections further reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 and the risk of hospitalization. or death by twenty-five.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduced the risk of symptomatic Delta infection by 88%. Another study that was not peer reviewed found that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines reduced the risk of hospitalization by 91% for people who were not immunocompromised.

As for Delta Plus, a study by Indian researchers still awaiting peer review found that Covaxin – one of the two main coronavirus vaccines in India – still neutralizes the variant. Covaxin is similar to the Chinese Sinovac shot.

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