Dr. Anthony Fauci discusses the 'Delta' COVID-19 variant during a White House press briefing on June 8, 2021.
SLIDE PRESENTATION:
https://www.indianz.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/11/whitehousecovid19briefing060921.pdf
Official White House Photo of Dr. Fauci by Chandler West:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/50912465776/
FULL REMARKS:
What I’m going to do right now is spend the next couple of minutes talking to you about a subject that has gained a lot more attention over the last few days, and that has to do with the variants in general, but particularly in the variant which we now refer to as Delta, or the B1617.2., which, in fact, as you know, originally was noticed in India and dominated in certain states in India, but now has spread throughout other elements and other areas of the world.
So let's just take a quick look at that. It's reported in 60 countries, including the UK and the USA. Clearly, now its transmissibility appears to be greater than the wild type, named the Alpha variant. It may be associated with an increased disease severity, such as hospitalization risk, compared to Alpha. And in lab tests, associated with modest decreased neutralization by sera from previously infected and vaccinated individuals compared to the Alpha.
However, fortunately, two doses of the Pfizer vaccine and AstraZeneca appear to be effective against the Delta variant. There's reduced vaccine effectiveness after one dose, however -- and I'll get back to that in a moment.
This is a publication, from what I had mentioned to you at a previous briefing, from Public Health England, and it has to do with the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against this delta variant. Just to reiterate: Two weeks after the second dose of the mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech, it was 88 percent effective against the 617, and just like we've shown multiple times, over 93 percent effective against the B117.
Take a look at the last bullet. Three weeks after one dose, both vaccines -- the AZ and the Pfizer-BioNTech -- were only 33 percent effective against symptomatic disease from delta. Clearly important about why a second dose is so important.
Now, what about what's going on in the UK and why should we learn lessons from this, and always getting back to the situation of why it's so important to be vaccinated?
In the UK, the delta variant is the rapidly emerging as the dominant variant -- greater than 60 percent. It is replacing the B117. The peak transmission in my conversations with, and the data associated with the UK, when talking to their health authorities, the transmission is peaking in the younger group of 12- to 20-year-olds -- mainly that group that we're concerned about here, about making sure they get vaccinated.
And as I mentioned before, there's poor protection after a single dose of either the mRNA or AZ vaccine.
This slide graphically demonstrates in the darker part of the slide, the red, the emergence of the B1617.2 compared to the lighter pink, which was the original B117. It's essentially taking over.
So let's look at where we are in the United States. That variant, the delta variant, currently accounts for more than 6p percent of the sequence cases in the United States. This is a situation, the way it was in England, where they had a B117 dominant, and then the 617 took over.
We cannot let that happen in the United States, which is such a powerful argument to underscore with Dr. Walensky said. To get vaccinated, particularly if you’ve had your first dose, make sure you get that second dose. And for those who have been not vaccinated yet, please get vaccinated. This is the national month of action. We want to get to and above the goal of 70 percent of the adult population receiving at least one dose by the fourth of July.
