St Lucia’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belmar-George disclosed at a press briefing Friday morning that three cases of the Delta variant, which emerged in India have been confirmed in-country for the first time.
At the same time, three cases of the Alpha variant, previously identified as the UK variant, have also been confirmed in St Lucia.
Of the three Delta variant cases, two of the infected persons are US nationals and one is St Lucian.
Only one of the six infected persons was fully vaccinated, according to Belmar-George.
St Lucia has recorded 54 cases of the Alpha variant to date.
Belmar-George noted that St Lucia has seen an increase of younger people being affected by COVID-19, including hospitalisations, and that this is likely an effect of the Delta variant.
According to the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
- The Delta variant is more contagious: The Delta variant is highly contagious, nearly twice as contagious as previous variants.
- Some data suggest the Delta variant might cause more severe illness than previous strains in unvaccinated persons. In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains.
- Unvaccinated people remain the greatest concern: Although breakthrough infections happen much less often than infections in unvaccinated people, individuals infected with the Delta variant, including fully vaccinated people with symptomatic breakthrough infections, can transmit it to others. CDC is continuing to assess data on whether fully vaccinated people with asymptomatic breakthrough infections can transmit. However, the greatest risk of transmission is among unvaccinated people who are much more likely to contract, and therefore transmit the virus.
- Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to be infectious for a shorter period: Previous variants typically produced less virus in the body of infected fully vaccinated people (breakthrough infections) than in unvaccinated people. In contrast, the Delta variant seems to produce the same high amount of virus in both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people. However, like other variants, the amount of virus produced by Delta breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people also goes down faster than infections in unvaccinated people. This means fully vaccinated people are likely infectious for less time than unvaccinated people.
Source: Loop.
