The Delta variant has rebooted Covid – so Australia must reboot its strategy
Australia’s pandemic response has been the envy of the world, but the emergence of the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus has put that at risk. The Delta variant is more transmissible than the original strain of the virus and is more likely to cause severe illness.
This means there’s a higher risk of the virus escaping hotel quarantine, and that it will be more difficult to stamp out if it gets into the community. It also means that younger people are now more at risk of getting sick.
However, it’s still possible to control the virus, but we’re going to have to change our strategy.
The first sign of trouble for the world came in late March, when there was a sudden uptick in new Covid-19 cases in India. Over little more than a month, infections rose from about 20,000 daily cases to more than 400,000 a day. Stories of overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums made headlines worldwide.
Experts were puzzled by the surge. Some thought the premature relaxation of restrictions was responsible, with large crowds at religious festivals and political rallies providing fertile ground for the virus to spread. But others suspected an additional factor: new variants.
We now know that a new lineage of the coronavirus – B.1.617 – played a key role in what happened in India. There are two key variants in the B.1.617 lineage, which the World Health Organisation has named Kappa (B.1.617.1) and Delta (B.1.617.2). Victoria recently beat an outbreak of the Kappa variant, although it had a few Delta cases as well.