The Delta Variant Could Soon Become the Dominant COVID-19 Strain. Here’s What You Need to Know
June 15, 2021 at 05:30PM The COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly becoming an arms race among the emerging variants of the virus, and at the moment, there’s no question which one is winning: the Delta variant—formally known as B.1.617.2—one of four strains to have emerged originally in India. It was just last month that the World Health Organization labeled Delta a “variant of concern”—joining with the Alpha strain, which emerged in the U.K.; the Beta strain, from South Africa; and the Gamma strain, first seen in Brazil. But Delta is fast becoming the most worrisome of the bunch. Health officials are sounding the alarm that Delta threatens to reverse the progress made in countries, like the U.S. and U.K., that have lately been beating the pandemic into retreat and worsen conditions in countries, like India, that are still deep in crisis. Researchers have found that Delta is at least 60% more transmissible within households than the Alpha strain, the dominant variant in the U.S....