Coronavirus variant Delta: the fourth wave in your luggage? – Travel

The particularly contagious Corona variant Delta has so far been detected in a good 100 countries. Wherever this Sars coronavirus appeared with some unpleasant mutations in the genome, it quickly prevailed against the viruses that had been circulating up until then. It is estimated to be 50 percent more contagious than the virus types that had dominated until then and about twice as contagious as the virus variant that started the global epidemic a year and a half ago.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) recently warned of the rapid spread of the Delta variant in Europe. It is to be expected that Delta will cause 90 percent of all Sars-CoV-2 infections in the European Union by the end of August. In Germany, the proportion that the delta variant makes up for new infections is already 50 percent, according to an estimate by the Robert Koch Institute. Although the ongoing vaccination programs are slowing down the spread, the virus cannot be stopped with vaccinations alone. According to the ECDC calculations, the fourth corona wave could reach similar proportions as last autumn, but there will probably be fewer deaths since most people at the highest risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus will already be vaccinated.

It has not yet been definitively answered whether the Delta variant is not only more infectious, but also leads to more severe disease courses than the virus types that Delta is currently suppressing. An initial analysis suggests that people with a delta infection have to be treated in hospital about twice as often as those infected with another variant. It is still unclear whether they will also die more often from the virus.

To what extent the delta variant is able to undermine the immune protection of vaccinated or recovered people is still unclear. According to the current state of research, the vaccines approved in Europe protect against severe disease and death with high reliability, but they cannot prevent infection with Delta as reliably as with other variants of the coronavirus. That means you can get infected and develop symptoms, but worse will rarely happen. However, not a small proportion of those vaccinated can spread the new variant. That is why it is important to maintain the safety measures such as masks, distance, ventilation and avoidance of contact even with vaccinations. Because that’s the good news: all of this effectively prevents the virus from finding new hosts.