The COVID-19 pandemic is still going strong fuelled mainly by the alpha and now the predominant delta variants…
The US is reporting a seven-day average of over 150, 000 cases per day, with serious consequences for hospitals in Florida, Iowa and other states. In Japan, the Paralympics are currently in progress (without crowds in attendance), while the country is in the midst of its fourth and most severe COVID-19 wave (~20,000 cases reported each day). In Australia, both major cities – Sydney and Melbourne – are still in lockdown.
It is well known that the delta variant is much more transmissible than the original Wuhan strain and previous iterations of the virus – almost as contagious as chicken pox. Recent data now indicates that the risk of hospitalization following infection with the delta variant may also be increased (by 2x compared to other variants. Thankfully, vaccination currently offers protection from severe COVID-19 disease and hospitalization, but only ~27% of the global population is currently fully vaccinated.
Of course, in some regions the issue is vaccine availability and there not much people can do in those cases; they have to wait patiently and follow the standard public health measures as best they can. Some people have “vaccine hesitancy” – these people usually have genuine concerns; allergies, underlying health conditions. They can be educated and slowly encouraged to get the vaccine. The real problem are the anti-vaxxers; these will be harder (to impossible to convince). Luckily, they represent a minority of people – the best they can do for now is: 1) to not spread misinformation, 2) definitely, don’t go out in the streets demonstrating putting other people at risk, and 3) being quiet until ~80% population is vaccinated and we can work ourselves out of this pandemic.
The biggest risk regarding a return to normality is the emergence of variants. As we said the highly transmissible delta variant is now predominating; the lambda variant is still active in South America. Vaccine work against these – in terms of preventing serious disease and hospitalization. Given that vaccinated people can still be infected and spread the virus the most dangerous thing would be the emergence of vaccine resistant variants. Currently, there is a variant designated 21H hanging around in Colombia and Ecuador, and today a variant first identified in South Africa in May is emerging as a variant of concern.
Hopefully we can vaccinated our way out of this pandemic – but – it won’t be easy.
Until next time …