‘Delta variant can grow in vaccinated people’s noses’

KUALA LUMPUR: A new study has found that the dominant Delta variant can grow in the noses of vaccinated people as strongly as in unvaccinated people.

This was revealed in a preliminary study titled “Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination when the Delta Variant is Prevalent — Wisconsin, July 2021” published on medRxiv.

medRxiv is for the distribution of preprints — complete but unpublished manuscripts — that describe human health research conducted, analysed and interpreted according to scientific principles. The paper found that in the case of a breakthrough infection, the Delta variant can grow in the noses of vaccinated people to the same degree as if they were not vaccinated at all.

It noted that the virus that grew was just as infectious as that in unvaccinated people, meaning vaccinated people can transmit the virus and infect others.

Commenting on the study, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said despite the possibility of breakthrough infections and ability to infect others, inevitably, vaccinated people were still protected against severe infection and fatality, plus reduced hospital admission.

“Please get vaccinated,” he posted on Facebook.

An Aug 13 article published on nationalgeographic.com said previous studies in hospitals in India; Provincetown, Massachusetts in the United States; and Finland had also shown that after vaccine breakthrough infections with Delta, there could be high levels of virus in people’s noses whether they were vaccinated or not. The article said that if the Wisconsin’s study’s findings held up, then people with breakthrough infections — many of whom did not develop Covid-19 symptoms —could unknowingly spread the virus.

“It is an alarming finding,” Katarina Grande, a public health supervisor and the Covid-19 data team lead of Madison and Dane County, who led the study, was quoted as saying.