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President Joe Biden warned Friday that Delta, a type of coronavirus first detected in India, poses a growing threat to vulnerable Americans.
“It’s a species that is easily transmissible, potentially more lethal, and especially dangerous to young people,” Biden said at a White House news conference.
His comments came just hours after Rochelle Wallinsky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Good Morning America that Delta is likely to become the dominant strain in the United States in the coming months. (Some experts have even suggested this could happen within weeks.)
Delta accounts for only 10% of US COVID-19 cases so far, but it already makes up about 90% of cases in the UK, according to a study from Imperial College London still awaiting peer review. The researchers also found that cases of COVID-19 in the UK are doubling every 11 days, likely as a result of the rapidly spreading variant.
Research from Public Health England indicates that Delta is associated with a 60% increased risk of domestic transmission of the coronavirus compared to Alpha – a variant that has been discovered in the UK. According to the CDC, alpha is already about 50% more transmissible than the original coronavirus strain.
Young people may be particularly susceptible to delta infections for two reasons: they are more likely to be socially active and less likely to be vaccinated than older adults.
In the United States, fewer adults younger than 50 are vaccinated than adults 50 or older. Imperial College London researchers also found that coronavirus infection in the UK is two and a half times more prevalent among people aged 5 to 49 than in those aged 50 and over. According to the study, most young people who have recently contracted the infection have not been vaccinated.
Experts are increasingly concerned that young people will be less protected against severe disease caused by delta infection: Researchers in Scotland have found that having a delta doubles the risk of hospitalization for alpha.
Emerging research also indicates that a single vaccine dose does not hold up well against Delta compared to other coronavirus strains. Recent analyzes of Public Health England found that two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine were 88% effective in preventing symptoms of COVID-19 from delta cases, while a single dose was only 33% effective by the same standard.
“Please, please, if you have one shot, get the second shot ASAP,” Biden said on Friday.
To date, less than 45% of Americans have been fully vaccinated, while 53% have received at least one dose. U.S. vaccination rates have also fallen dramatically in the past two months, from a weekly average of nearly 3.4 million doses a day in mid-April to just under 780,000 doses a day on Thursday.
The longer vaccination rates continue to fall, the greater the chances of a delta spreading – and thus continuing to multiply and mutate.
“The worst-case scenario is if Delta turns into something completely different, a completely different animal, then our current vaccines become less effective or ineffective,” Vivek Cherian, an internist in Baltimore, told Insider recently.
However, Biden said the United States likely won’t return to lockdowns because so many people have already been vaccinated.
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