Written By: Satata Karmakar | Updated : November 19, 2021 4:01 PM IST
Highly Contagious Delta AY.4.2 COVID-19 Variant Is Less Likely To Show Any Symptoms, Warn UK Experts
The first case of the COVID-19 virus was detected from China's Wuhan city back in 2019. Since then the virus has wrecked havoc worldwide, in 2021, COVID-19 second wave swept India, leaving lakhs affected. According to the experts the variant which led to this massive surge in cases was the Delta variant of COVID-19. However, reports have suggested that the virus has now mutated to form another highly contagious variant. This new mutation of the Delta variant of COVID-19 has been classed in the UK as a Variant Under Investigation (VUI) amid concerns of its increased transmissibility, is less likely to display any symptoms, a new real-world study said on Thursday.
The latest results from the long-running Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission [REACT-1] study show the prevalence of the Delta AY.4.2 variant has been growing at a rate of 2.8 per cent a day since September and is driving some of England's high infection rate. The analysis by Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI is based on swab tests taken at home by over 100,000 people in England between October 19 and November 5.
The study result found that people who were infected with AY.4.2 were less likely to have any of the "classic" symptoms of loss or change of sense of taste or smell, fever or new persistent cough, and also less likely to have any other kind of symptoms. Speaking to the media, Professor Paul Elliott, director of the REACT programme from Imperial's School of Public Health said, "Why it is more transmissible we don't know. It does seem to be less symptomatic."
The data also show that only 33 per cent of those with the mutation had these classic symptoms, compared to 46 per cent of those with Delta. Overall, the study found that infections across England have been falling but are still very high, and are now at a similar rate to January this year.
"Although hospitalisations and deaths remain lower than previous peaks, the data show that infections across the country remain very high," Professor Elliott notes. "The rate of prevalence has steadily declined throughout this round, but an overall figure of 1.57 per cent is still nearly two-fold higher than that recorded in the previous round. It is possible that the prevalence rate could rise once again now that children have returned to school following half-term, though this could be at least partially offset by as many people as possible having booster jabs when offered and those aged twelve years or over having the vaccine," Elliott said.
