The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Covid-19: why the Delta variant is so contagious

2021-07-19T18:51:58.438Z


Preliminary study by Chinese researchers shows Indian mutant shortens virus incubation period by two days


How to explain such a speed of propagation of the Delta (Indian) variant in France?

Quite simply because it would have acquired "an advantage" a priori insignificant but decisive: an infected person would be contagious two days earlier than with the original strain.

This is one of the lessons of the study conducted by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Their work has just been pre-published on medRxiv, a website with preliminary reports.

Through tracing and isolation of contact cases, researchers followed 167 people cascaded with the virus from the same person, patient zero of the Delta variant in China, detected on May 21.

A viral load 1,260 times higher than that of the first strain

PCR tests were carried out every day on people placed in solitary confinement.

The result: it only takes four days on average with the Delta variant, compared to six during the 2020 epidemic, to infect other people.

As for the viral load of the Delta, it is 1260 times higher than that of the first strain. “We are probably more contagious and earlier because the virus multiplies faster and the quantity of virus in the nose is much higher,” suggests Sandrine Sarrazin, Inserm researcher at the Marseille-Luminy immunology center. Another observation: the virus can mutate within the same person, from the first contamination. "Hence the importance of limiting transmission to avoid the emergence of variants that could become annoying", insists the researcher.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-07-19

You may like

Trends 24h

Life/Entertain 2024-03-28T17:17:20.523Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.