Roving Periscope: Mask up again as deadlier Delta has “changed the war”

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Don’t be complacent nor throw caution to the wind. In fact, be all the more cautious now. First of all, wear the mask again and get fully vaccinated at the earliest. The next wave of the pandemic may be round-the-corner, waiting to catch the careless unawares.

Some countries, including India, are aware of the next danger and are already gearing up.

A fitter Delta (B.1.617.2), the fastest-spreading mutant ninja of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has a viral load a thousand times more than all previous strains, and has “changed the war”, reached 132 countries, can infect even vaccinated people and turn them into spreaders, according to media reports on Saturday.

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has warned the world that Delta is now as contagious as chickenpox, can be passed on even by fully-vaccinated people, and may cause more serious disease than earlier strains, it said.

Media reports, quoting an internal CDC document titled “Improving communications around vaccine breakthrough and vaccine effectiveness”, said the fast-spreading variant required an entirely new approach to help the public understand the danger.

Now the unvaccinated are three times more likely to become infected and more than 10 times more likely to become seriously ill or die, the CDC said.

“Acknowledge the war has changed,” it said. Improve communications around individual risk among vaccinated. The Delta variant is no less transmissible than chickenpox and more transmissible than a host of other diseases, such as MERS, SARS, Ebola, smallpox, the common cold, and seasonal cases of flu, including the one that caused the pandemic.

Recommending preventive measures including making vaccines mandatory for healthcare professionals to protect the vulnerable and a return to the universal wearing of face masks, the reports said while vaccinated people were less likely to become infected, if and once they contracted such “breakthrough infections” they might be just as likely as the unvaccinated to pass the disease on to others.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that hard-won gains in battling Covid-19 were being lost as the Delta variant spreads but that increased vaccination could still save lives.

“The vaccines currently approved by the WHO all provide significant protection against severe disease and hospitalization,” the global health watchdog’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan told journalists. “We are fighting the same virus but a virus that has become fitter.”

The fastest-spreading and most formidable version of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 has overturned earlier assumptions among virologists and epidemiologists about the disease. This at a time preventive vaccines have generally been confused as ‘cures’. It has encouraged many countries to lift social restrictions and they are yet to realize that Delta is now the dominant variant across 132 countries, according to the WHO.

The fast-spreading Delta forced the CDC this week to advise even the fully-vaccinated to go back to face coverings in situations where the virus was likely to spread.

On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden urged local governments to pay people to get vaccinated and set new rules requiring federal workers to provide proof of vaccination or face regular testing, mask mandates, and travel restrictions.

Sensing the lurking danger, India has postponed all incoming and outgoing international flights, which were scheduled to restart on August 1, until August 31. The second wave of the pandemic had wreaked havoc in the South Asian nation in April-May this year.

If the western countries were more affected in 2020, those in Asia were particularly hard hit this year by the spread of Delta, first detected in India. Australia, Japan, and the Philippines were among the countries to announce tighter restrictions on Friday. Other countries are also likely to follow soon.

“We know from the research that it (Delta) has a viral load 1,000 times higher than previous variants, that’s why we see more cases because it transmits more easily and faster,” Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist from Griffith University in Australia’s Queensland state, said. He said Delta appears to cause more severe symptoms, especially regarding breathing difficulties.

Australia, far slower than other rich countries to vaccinate the people, has restarted imposing lockdowns. From Monday, soldiers will help police patrol its biggest city Sydney, isolating coronavirus-positive patients.

The Philippines also announced to lockdown the Manila capital region, home to more than 13 million people, for two weeks. India reported its highest number of daily cases on Friday in three weeks.

In Japan, where a surge in cases has overshadowed the ongoing Olympic Games, the government proposed states of emergency through the end of August in three prefectures near Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka.

“Infections are broadening. The situation is extremely severe,” Japan’s Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said, warning infections had not yet reached a peak.

Vietnam, which had fully vaccinated less than 1 percent of its 96 million people, is mobilizing private hospitals to take Covid-19 patients. After successfully containing the virus for much of the pandemic, it has been facing record daily increases in infections since late April.

“The pandemic is evolving in a very complicated manner and is on the worsening trend in many cities and provinces,” the Vietnamese Ministry of Health said in a statement.