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Delta variant has arrived in Utah, but there's no need to panic - Salt Lake Tribune
Jun 21, 2021 1 min, 46 secs
The best defense against the Delta variant is getting vaccinated, according to medical experts.

Nels Elde, an associate professor of human genetics at the University of Utah and winner of a 2020 “genius grant,” said it’s certainly possible it could become dominant in Utah, “but that prediction has been made before [with other variants] and has sort of, I would say, at least slightly fizzled.”.

“The Delta variant should make us a little nervous and more cautious,” said Eddie Stenehjem, an infectious diseases physician at Intermountain Healthcare.

More than 90% of the COVID cases in the United Kingdom are now the Delta variant, and it’s estimated to be 30-100% more transmissible than the Alpha variant — which was estimated to be 43-90% more transmissible than the first strains of the coronavirus.

And the rate of people getting vaccinated has slowed dramatically.

“Fortunately, deaths haven’t risen all that much in the UK,” Stenehjem said, “but we’re really going to have to watch what is happening there in terms of hospitalizations.”.

“I don’t think we’re going to see this massive rise in hospitalizations this summer by any means, because it’s the summer months, and we have a lot of people vaccinated against COVID,” Stenehgm said.

Early indications are that they’re 80-90% effective against the Delta variant.

“This is the first variant that we’re seeing that potentially has some component of resistance to the vaccine,” Stenehjem said.

And that’s nothing to panic about, Elde said, pointing out that annual flu vaccines are often just 50-60% effective.

“And yet if enough people get vaccinated, that still puts a big dent in the ability of flu virus to spread,” he said.

But the “biggest lesson from the variants” is that we may not have an unlimited amount of time to get people vaccinated.

He said it’s important for everyone — especially the unvaccinated — to “remain cautious” about going to stores and big indoor gatherings, “particularly because of the Delta variant.”

“The really good news,” Elde said, " is that we already have scientific evidence that the vaccines remain really effective with the Delta variant

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