Is Delta Variant Increasing Risk to unvaccinated people?

The delta variant is spreading worldwide.

• Experts think that this type is more infectious than previous variants of the virus.
• While some vaccinated people have developed novel coronavirus from the delta variant, they seem to have less major symptoms than unvaccinated individuals.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky provided her severest warning about the extremely infectious Delta variant. “However, looking state by state and country by country it is clear communities where people remain unvaccinated are communities that are vulnerable. I expect that in the coming weeks the [Delta] variant will eclipse the Alpha variant” she said.

“It is extraordinarily contagious,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and health policy, Division of Infectious Diseases, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee. “Given that it is so very contagious, remember, the virus’ only job is to infect someone else so it can keep reproducing. Here in Nashville, essentially 90 percent of people hospitalized today are unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated.”

On the basis of Public Health England study published in May, a single dose of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer’s jabs can decrease the risk of getting symptoms because of delta variant by 33 percent. After two jabs, of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is 88 percent successful against symptomatic disease from the delta variant.

“The current vaccines are effective at providing protection against the delta variant,” said Dr. David Hirschwerk, an attending infectious diseases specialist at Northwell Health in Manhasset, N.Y

. “There will continue to be some breakthrough infections in people who are vaccinated, regardless of the strain. However, it remains the case that in vaccinated individuals who have breakthrough infections, the symptoms are very mild or the patients are asymptomatic and only detected by screening.”

“Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN.

“The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner said.

The fast-spreading Delta variant of the COVID-19 is gearing up infections in developing countries that are extremely short on novel coronavirus injections to fight fatal surges. 

“This variant is like tinder sitting in a dry forest” waiting for a spark among the unvaccinated, said Dr. F. Perry Wilson, an epidemiologist who directs the Clinical and Translational Research Accelerator at the Yale School of Medicine.