The Sars-CoV-2 virus is a virus that scientists have not yet seen. It is known that viruses are constantly changing. The Covid-19 virus, on the other hand, is changing faster and more fundamentally than most of the viruses known to date. Several coronavirus variants have emerged since the first major outbreak in China in December 2019. The delta virus strain, which first appeared in India in October 2020, will soon be the dominant one worldwide – and the most aggressive to date.
Delta is on the rise everywhere and is causing the number of new infections to rise again even in better vaccinated countries. A new advance publication from China underlines how dangerous the Delta variant is. According to this, the viral load is around 1000 times higher than with the first virus types.
More contagious viral load
The study preview published by the specialist site «Medrxiv» examined the first 167 infections with the Delta variant on the Chinese mainland. These could all be traced back to a first delta infection in the country. “The examination of the daily PCR tests of the quarantined people showed that the viral load of the first positive test for delta infections was around 1000 times higher than that of the infections with the strains in the first epidemic wave of 2020,” it says in the study.
Viral load is the number of viruses in a certain amount of patient’s blood. The authors of the China study deduce from the high viral load a faster viral spread rate and also a higher infection rate even in the early stage of a delta infection.
Further studies
Martin Moder (33), Viennese molecular biologist and author of popular science books, took a close look at the China study. “There is increasing evidence that Delta leads to severe courses more often in unvaccinated people,” writes Moder on Twitter. “Delta is likely to be associated with a greatly increased viral load, at least at the beginning of the infection.” That is “probably part of the explanation why the dirty thing is so damn contagious.”
Moder also refers to the advance publication of a study from Canada in which more than 200,000 cases were evaluated and factors such as age, gender and previous illnesses were taken into account.
Compared to the original variants, Delta increases the chance of hospitalization by 120 percent, and intensive admission by as much as 287 percent. The risk of dying from the Delta variant increases by 137 percent.
The work coincides with data from Scotland, which also suggest an increased risk of severe courses. According to experts, vaccination can prevent around 90 percent of the serious course of the disease.
WHO: “The pandemic is far from over”
Last week the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of the high likelihood of new, possibly more dangerous variants. “The pandemic is far from over,” said Professor Didier Houssin (72), chairman of the WHO Covid 19 emergency committee.
As the virus continues to spread, new variants could emerge in the future that could be even more difficult to control, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (56): “The virus is constantly evolving, which leads to even more transmissible variants.”