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Is Delta defeating us? Here's why the variant makes contact tracing so much harder - Women's Agenda

Is Delta defeating us? Here's why the variant makes contact tracing so much harder - Women's Agenda

Is Delta defeating us? Here's why the variant makes contact tracing so much harder - Women's Agenda
Jul 23, 2021 1 min, 45 secs

The successful test and trace strategy of NSW, which controlled the Crossroads Hotel outbreak a year ago, has not worked as well against Delta, writes C Raina MacIntyre, UNSW in this article republished from The Conversation.

We are also seeing the virus spread well beyond the initial eastern suburbs cluster.

The virus then spread from NSW to Victoria resulting in a lockdown there too, followed by South Australia.

One study found the amount of virus shed from people infected with Delta to be over 1,000 times greater than from the original 2020 strain identified in Wuhan.

So, the successful test and trace strategy of NSW, which controlled the Crossroads Hotel outbreak a year ago without needing a stringent lockdown, has not worked as well against Delta.

However after the outbreak spread to Southwest Sydney, it began growing again, prompting an extended and stricter lockdown.

But Delta makes the job so much harder.

One detailed study showed the average time from exposure to becoming infected was six days in 2020, but four days with Delta.

This makes it harder to identify contacts before they’re infected.

NSW Health reports that when they start contact tracing, they are finding almost 100% of household members already infected, compared with about 30% last year.

The fact we’re largely unvaccinated leaves us vulnerable to severe outbreaks, especially with the more severe Delta variant.

In countries like Israel, which has fully vaccinated over 60% of its population, although Delta is causing outbreaks, people are largely protected from hospitalisation and death.

We need to invest in more vaccine manufacturing capacity, including for mRNA vaccines, think ahead and start ordering booster vaccines to match variants such as Delta and another variant Epsilon now.

Meanwhile, we cannot give up and let Delta spread just because we yearn for our old lives.

In a largely unvaccinated population, this more deadly virus will be catastrophic.

For now the strategy pioneered by Victoria last year may help — tracing contacts of contacts to be one step ahead.

If the time to becoming infected is too short to catch contacts before they are contagious, then this is a good strategy.

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