After Vaccination and Reopening, New Variant of Covid-19 Arrives

Only three weeks ago, the United Kingdom hailed the success of its Vaccine effort by eliminating numerous coronavirus limitations. One headline read, “Goodbye, Lockdown.” However, a more transmissible new strain of the coronavirus has emerged since then, jeopardizing plans to reopen the country fully on June 21.

Public health experts in the United States are now wrestling with the risk that a similar reversal may occur here, putting the end of the pandemic that many had predicted for this summer in peril, just as it did in the United Kingdom. The new variation, known as Delta or B.1.617, first appeared in India during the coronavirus outbreak. It is roughly 40% more transmissible than the original strain, or wild type, that first appeared in 2019.

While multiple coronavirus Variants have emerged since the outbreak began, epidemiologists are concerned that mutation may result in a strain immune to vaccinations. The Delta Variants, according to Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, is “the worst we’ve encountered thus far.”According to genome sequencing research, the Delta variation accounts for just around 6% of instances in the United States. During a Tuesday briefing of the White House pandemic response team, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s top public health adviser, warned that this might change quickly.

“We cannot allow that to happen in the United States,” Fauci added, calling the situation in the United Kingdom a “strong argument” for vaccination. By the Fourth of July weekend, Biden hopes to have inoculated 70% of American adults. Even though the country has now provided more than 300 million doses of coronavirus vaccine, the effort has recently halted.