What You Need to Know about the COVID-19 Delta Variant

Transcription:

Melanie: Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. And it's important that you join us today as we discuss the COVID-19 Delta variant with Dr. Bud Lawrence. He's the Medical Director of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital's Emergency department and Chairman of Henry Mayo's COVID-19 Response Task Force. He's also a fan favorite here at RadioMD and It's Your Health Radio. So Dr. Lawrence, I'm so glad to have you with us because, wow, what we're seeing is a little bit frightening and, you know, it's making people angry and confused and the messaging is mixed. Tell us a little bit about the Delta variant and any other variants that you know about. Tell us about them.

Dr Bud Lawrence: Well, good morning. And thank you for having me on, Melanie. I really appreciate it. So to talk about variants first, generally speaking, variants are just different permutations of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. So essentially, each time this virus replicates, there is a chance that during the replication process, the virus can have some sort of deformity, a mutation is what we call that. This deformity could make the virus either more effective at causing infections or less effective. And by more effective, I mean, it could make it more contagious or maybe it makes it more deadly or maybe it makes it less contagious or less deadly.

And so each of those mutations can occur and it's somewhat mathematical. Every so many replications, you get a mutation and those mutations lead to what we call variants. And so the variants are kind of named by the Greek alphabet is how the CDC is naming them. And the first one was the UK variant, which has the Greek letter of Alpha. And now, we are currently dealing with the variant Delta, which initially started not in the United States, and we think in India.

So the issue with the Delta variant is that if you look at the initial coronavirus that was causing COVID-19, that virus was fairly infectious, caused a lot of infections. But the UK variant was about 50% more infectious than the initial virus. And then this virus, the Delta variant is another 50% more infectious. So almost twice as infectious as the initial COVID-19 virus that we saw when we had the initial start of the outbreak. So very concerning in terms of its transmissibility. And that's really what the main issue has been with the Delta variant.

Melanie: Well, so that's what I heard as well as the transmissibility. And they even called it one of the more infectious diseases that we know of respiratory infectious diseases. So tell us a little bit about how this one's transmitted. I mean, with COVID-19, Dr. Lawrence, we were worried about surfaces and we were wiping everything down. But now, this is more airborne. Am I right about that? Tell us why it's so much more transmissive..

Dr Bud Lawrence: The transmissibility piece of it has to do with the genetic makeup of this particular variant. It is still a coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Same virus essentially, but just with slightly different coding that makes it more effective in getting into our cells and thus make it more infectious. So, it's pretty similar to what we've been dealing with before actually, which is it does come through the air. So really, wearing a mask seems to be very helpful, and also washing your hands and not touching your face. Those are things that we've been saying throughout the entire pandemic. And that is very true here. It's just that, whereas maybe for example, the initial coronavirus that was causing COVID-19, maybe you had to get a hundred viruses in your body to get an infection. With this particular strain, you might only need to get 50 viruses in your body to get an infection. It's more easily transmissible in that way. And so we had to be a little more cautious about wearing a mask and socially distancing a bit and certainly washing your hands.

Melanie: So, does it have different symptoms? Because, I mean, I personally think that my family had it, but I just had a really bad summer cold. But it didn't feel like the other colds. I'm fully vaccinated, but it didn't feel like other colds that I've had. Now, maybe I did just have a summer cold, but I heard this one has some cold-like symptoms, as opposed to only the flu-like symptoms that COVID-19, the original had.

Dr Bud Lawrence: Yeah, the Delta variant, and to be honest, most colds that you get are coronaviruses. So, they make up a fair number of the amount of viral infections that cause the common cold. So it's not unreasonable to think that this virus would cause the same. And what we're seeing with the Delta variant, the more common symptoms are things like headache, sore throat, runny nose, fever, and a persistent cough. So those are symptoms that are similar to the initial infection, but the initial infection did have a lot more body aches, and more flu-like type of symptoms. But, again, we're seeing just sort of common cold symptoms.

And the issue too is that since everyone was wearing masks and socially distancing and doing all the things we've been doing, we've had very low transmission rates of common cold and usual viral infections. And so now that the masking mandates kind of came down -- well, they're coming back up now -- when the masking mandates came down, we started seeing a resurgence of the normal viral infections that we see in our communities and our populations. And so it's very challenging to differentiate these viral infections from COVID-19, which is, you know, thankfully we have access to plentiful testing at this time, but that does create an issue in terms of people being aware that they have COVID and not just some kind of a cold, and that they should take some extra precautions against getting others infected.

Melanie: Yeah. And that's what we did here in this house. But I mask everywhere, Dr. Lawrence. I won't go out of the house without one on, certainly not to the grocery store. We think it was probably like from graduation or the prom parties that were going on. Something brought it in. I'm not really sure whether it was a cold or not. But tell us a little bit, because I just mentioned to the listeners that I was fully vaxxed. And still, maybe then it was just a cold and we haven't been used to them as you said, I loved not being sick for like a year and a half, not getting any of those things. But tell us a little bit about the vaccine. So does it protect us from Delta? Does it give us some protection? Tell us a little bit how that works.

Dr Bud Lawrence: So with the Delta variant, one of the interesting things we're seeing is that, yes, people who are fully vaccinated, which means, you know, two weeks have passed after your last dose of your vaccine or if it's a Johnson and Johnson, your first dose, we are absolutely seeing patients or people who have been vaccinated, who are getting COVID-19.

Now, that's not entirely unexpected. We know, number one, the vaccine, although it works extremely well in terms of protecting people at 95%, 96% protection, that's not a hundred percent. So some people certainly could get COVID-19, but in particular, the Delta variant is causing infections in people who are fully vaccinated. Now, the important thing about that, and I should say probably around 20% of people who are getting COVID currently, and most everyone who's getting COVID currently is getting this Delta variant, at least in the United States. That's what we think, that the penetration of the Delta variant we think is very high.

So we think that most people are probably getting the Delta variant. About 20% of those are people who are already vaccinated, which sounds like a very high number. However, you have to look at w hat happens with those 20% of people. And those people in general are not very sick. And when I say not very sick, I mean, you can have the flu and feel pretty sick. You feel very icky, but what I'm looking at is did you need to spend the night in the hospital? Did you need to spend multiple nights in the hospital? And when we look at hospitalization rates across the country, most of the people that are getting hospitalized are unvaccinated. There are some vaccinated people who are getting hospitalized, but it's much less common, very less common. And then, in particularly the most important thing is people who are dying from COVID now, because, yes, there still are people dying from COVID, those people are almost uniformly un-vaccinated.

So I've said this on many platforms, it's the United States of America. We have lots of choices and freedoms as citizens of this country. And certainly, it's your choice to be vaccinated or not. However, I would say that there is a burgeoning robust amount of data that's really supporting the fact that if you are vaccinated, you're going to do much better with COVID. If you happen to get it, and the likelihood of you getting it is much less. So that is becoming somewhat clear. And I think that when you use the data and information to make your decision on if you should be vaccinated or your family members or children should be vaccinated, I think you have to look at the data that's coming out and say, "Well, there is a pretty decent correlation about people who were vaccinated doing much better with this and people who aren't."

Melanie: Well, and I hear them calling it the pandemic of the unvaccinated. And I personally just think it's the decent right thing to do. I mean, we don't see smallpox anymore in this country or polio, tuberculosis, all of these things, mumps. Remember the days when my brother had mumps. But now, we don't really see very much of those things because of vaccines. And I just think it's the decent thing to do, if not for yourself, then for everybody you love and around you.

Now, there's been some confusing messages about masking. And as you Said, Kind of the masks came off and we started seeing this resurgence. Now, we're hearing that we should be masking at least indoors, even if we're fully vaxxed. I want your best advice. You can tell us what the CDC and the World Health Organization have said, Dr. Lawrence. But also, you're an ER doc. You see this stuff every day. I want your best advice for masking and vaxxing, and what do you want us to know.

Dr Bud Lawrence: So my best advice for masking is you need to make a decision based on your personal experiences and what your personal risk factors are in general. I would say that if everyone wore a mask 100% of the time, we have much less transmission of this virus. Now, that's not necessarily reasonable and it's not comfortable necessarily.

So, I would say though that if you are indoors and you are vaccinated, the risk of you getting COVID is low, but it's not immaterially low and we know that 20% of these people getting infections from the Delta variant are vaccinated. I would say that it's probably a reasonable thought process to think maybe I should wear my mask indoors. You're around other people and the risk is certainly there. And I think most importantly, this particular variant is just super contagious. And, if it's super contagious, you may want to protect yourself with a mask. Again, that's your own decision or actually more often the decision of the business or wherever you are indoors. But if you're a high risk person or you have high risk people living with you at home, or you have unvaccinated people living with you at home, I think that we need to sort of, as you say, sort of carry the torch for our community and be good stewards of protecting our community members. And certainly to do that would be vaccinating and wearing a mask.

And so the next piece is vaccination. Again, I do think that the data is coming back very strongly to say that the risks of this vaccination, which as we have found so far have been very, very low, very, very tiny. Those risks are greatly outweighed by the benefits of being vaccinated in terms of protecting yourself and your family members from getting COVID, and if you did get COVID, in terms of how sick you would get, if you did have that infection. So I think that it's okay to be pretty clear about the vaccination piece that that really does make sense to get it done. The masking piece, you need to make your own decision on that or the business that you're in will make that decision for you.

But certainly, if everybody masks a hundred percent of the time and everybody was vaccinated, I think that this COVID pandemic would be behind us much sooner than later. And I do think that vaccination is going to be the pathway. As you said, with mumps and measles and these other things, polio, for example, I think vaccination will provide us a pathway to getting this pandemic well behind us.

Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Lawrence. What great information and what an awesome guest you always are.

To find locations where you can get vaccinated, visit myturn.ca.gov. And that concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. If you have concerns about COVID-19, we encourage you to check the Henry Mayo website at henrymayo.com and click on the virus link at the top of the page for more info.

For more health tips and updates, follow us on your social channels and check out all the other great podcasts in our library, because Dr. Lawrence was on recently with both of his daughters and really, really cool podcasts. So go and check all those out at henrymayo.com. I'm Melanie Cole. And thanks for listening.