Delta virus has already spread days before symptoms show: study

• People infected with the Delta variant are more likely to spread the virus before symptoms have emerged, according to a new study.
• People with the Delta variant can transmit it for almost two days before experiencing any symptoms.
• You’re twice as likely to be hospitalized with the Delta variant than the Alpha strain.

They don’t call the Delta variant the most transmissible strain of COVID-19 for no reason.

People infected with the Delta variant are more likely to spread the virus before even developing symptoms, a stark difference compared to people who were infected with earlier versions of the coronavirus, according to a study.

A new analysis of an outbreak in Guangdong, China looked at data from 101 people who were infected with the Delta variant between May and June this year; it found that people, on average, develop symptoms nearly six days after infection. But what has experts most concerned is that people infected can spread the virus for almost two days before any sign of COVID-19 pops up.

It’s a stunning revelation that seems to supplement worries amid the recent surge of the Delta variant in the U.S., which has caused cases and hospitalizations to rise to levels not seen for months.

The pre-print study, which appears in the journal Nature, offers a new light on the Delta variant’s emergence. Previous research highlighted that older cases of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes respiratory illness in humans, left a smaller window for receiving a positive test.

Past strains typically took 0.8 days between the development of symptoms and positive tests, also known as presymptomatic transmission. With the Delta variant, it takes far longer and contains a higher viral load.

According to the research, nearly three-quarters of Delta infections occur in the presymptomatic phase.

“[It] helps explain how this variant has been able to outpace both the wild-type virus and other variants to become the dominant strain worldwide,” one researcher said in the study.

Delta makes hospitalizations twice as likely

In a different study analyzing more than 40,000 infections in England, researchers said that people who are infected with the Delta variant are twice as likely to be hospitalized compared to others infected with the Alpha variant.

Fewer than 2% of infections occurred in fully vaccinated people, according to the study.

“The main takeaway is that if you have an unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated population, then an outbreak of Delta can lead to a higher burden on hospitals, on health care, than an Alpha outbreak would,” Anne Presanis, an author of the study a biostatistician at the University of Cambridge, told The New York Times.

The current seven-day hospitalization average is 12,297 admission, a 5.7% increase in the seven-day average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Delta variant first appeared in India in late 2020 before it hit stateside in the spring. It’s been labeled just as contagious as chickenpox, measles, and other viruses. It’s required the CDC to rollback mask recommendations in a short time, in addition to the Food & Drug Administration green-lighting a booster shot for vaccinated individuals beginning in September.