• 3 days ago
Is it more dangerous? Are the vaccines effective against it?

A scientist answers 8 questions about the Delta variant.
Transcript
00:00With all the other variants, it dominated and in some countries, but with this variant, it's
00:07going to be just the global variant, it's dominating across the world.
00:20The last bit of data places that get 30-35% in some areas, the prevalence is growing a lot faster
00:27in places where you have low vaccination rates, primarily in the south of the country.
00:39It's very transmissible and so what that means is that for people who are vaccinated, I'm not
00:45as concerned, but I am concerned for people that are not vaccinated because the transmissibility,
00:52we're talking about two to three times higher than what we started with.
01:01I think we're going to be learning more specifically about whether it can cause
01:07more severe disease, at least I think that there's an incomplete picture right there.
01:11So what we're seeing is also younger people who are getting infected faster,
01:18so the increase in hospitalizations just could be tied to a faster spread.
01:23So we don't have any conclusive data to really tell us that it is
01:28more severe or you're more likely to get hospitalized at this point.
01:36We have data now that shows that people have like germinal centers like in their lymph nodes
01:44that are still active like several months after vaccination, so that's a pretty good indication
01:49that the immune response is robust and so those cells and the germinal centers, they actually
01:55continue to mature and evolve to recognize variants. So thus far it doesn't seem like we're
02:01going to need a booster anytime soon, but again this is a global community effort. If we leave
02:09parts of the globe vulnerable, this comes back to like the vaccine inequities that exist,
02:15we are giving this virus more chances to replicate, more chances to mutate,
02:21more chances to again change its transmissibility.
02:25My concern with the U.S. is that we, you know, we're like at 53-54 percent right now of the population vaccinated,
02:40so we're definitely more vulnerable, but specifically we have pockets of communities
02:46with lower vaccination rates and lower vaccination immunization thresholds.
02:52So while we may not see this big wave, we might see these
02:57like hyper localized outbreaks in these areas because it is very transmissible.
03:08The symptoms that are most commonly being reported right now are headaches, runny nose, sore throat,
03:16so very different from the traditional COVID symptoms which are like a fever and the cough,
03:21right, but we have to be mindful of the fact that it's a younger portion of the population that is
03:29now getting infected, so we expect the symptoms to be different and just as we cannot conclude that
03:36it is more severe right now, we can't also conclude that the symptoms per se
03:41are different other than maybe they're happening
03:45to a milder extent in a population that is less vulnerable.
03:54It was first identified in India, I believe that it was either late last year or early this year,
04:01but definitely before there was sufficient part of the population vaccinated in India.
04:05They had such a high number of cases that their healthcare system was completely overwhelmed.
04:12Because there was a lack of oxygen to provide supports to patients, they were given steroid
04:16injections which left them with compromised immune systems for some of them. So of course,
04:23when you have a compromised immune system, then you are more likely to have an infection.
04:29If you take a look at the epidemiology and you take a look at when these variants emerged,
04:34every single one of them have emerged in places of low vaccination and high community spread. I am
04:40really, you know, telling people that haven't gotten their vaccine, now you no time to wait anymore.