How does the delta variant affect children?
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(CNN) -
An intensive study on the delta variant of the new coronavirus shows that it is in fact more contagious than other variants and also has the ability to evade the immune protection of AstraZeneca's covid-19 vaccine to some extent.
An international team of researchers conducted a series of tests with more than 130 healthcare workers from India, as well as laboratory tests to understand how the B.1.617.2 or delta variant infects human tissue compared to other variants. , including variant B.1.1.7 or alpha.
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The researchers found that the 130 healthcare workers infected with the delta variant did not have a higher risk of hospitalization, but they were more likely to develop a post-vaccination infection from this variant compared to others.
The delta variant replicates better in lung cells than the alpha variant, reported Ravindra Gupta of the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases in the UK and colleagues in the academic journal Nature.
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Blood tests performed on 12 people infected with the new coronavirus in the UK in 2020 showed that the alpha variant was 2.3 times less susceptible to immune system proteins called neutralizing antibodies in the blood than the original viral strain.
They found that the delta variant was almost 6 times less sensitive, and the B.1.351 or beta variant, first observed in South Africa, was more than 8 times less sensitive.
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The delta variant was also more efficient in the cell fusion process in the laboratory.
Helping an infected cell fuse with other cells is one of the ways that some viruses replicate more easily in the body, another demonstration of a pathway that the delta variant uses to better replicate itself.
Also, it appeared to be better at getting into cells first than another variant, Gupta's team reported.
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“These data support the notion of a greater ease of infection of [variant] B.1.617.2, either due to a higher viral load or a higher infectivity of the particles, which results in a higher probability of transmission. person to person, "they wrote.
Delta variant