Newsman: Coronavirus delta variant is one of the most transmissible viruses as Measles, chickenpox, this — they’re all up there. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC now recommends encouraging everyone to wear a mask in school, regardless of vaccination status and urging local health authorities to consider heightened prevention strategies like “universal masking” for public indoor settings, particularly when it comes to large indoor gatherings with travelers.
“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.
The Delta coronavirus variant surging across the United States appears to cause more severe illness and spread as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal document from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The document — a slide presentation — outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
“I think people need to understand that we’re not crying wolf here. This is serious,” she told CNN.
“It’s one of the most transmissible viruses we know about. Measles, chickenpox, this — they’re all up there.” And she said everyone in schools — students, staff and visitors — should wear masks at all times.
Nationwide, with the delta variant now estimated to make up nearly all of the circulating virus in the United States, the average pace of new cases has climbed to rates not seen since mid-April. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned members of Congress on Thursday, according to a release from a House subcommittee, that hospitalizations had surged to levels beyond the peak of summer last year.
“This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to the CDC’s updated mask recommendation,” said Walensky. “This outbreak investigation is one of many CDC has been involved in across the country and data from those investigation will be rapidly shared with the public when available,” She said.
As of Wednesday, cases have risen in all but one state in the past seven days compared with the week before, according to Johns Hopkins.
It cited new data from a delta variant outbreak in Massachusetts that led to hundreds of coronavirus infections — many among fully vaccinated travelers.
The CDC, in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also published more details about the “pivotal discovery” that prompted federal health officials to ramp up their masking guidance earlier this week. Tests used to diagnose cases linked to the Massachusetts outbreak had similar “cycle threshold” values among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated “breakthrough” cases, suggesting both groups could be carrying similar loads of the virus.
The scientists who authored the report, published Friday, said their finding amounted to a “crude correlation” to transmissibility, and cautioned that “microbiological studies are required to confirm these findings.”
In Provincetown, CDC researchers — as well as local, state and university scientists and investigators — had turned up 469 cases of COVID-19 among Massachusetts residents who traveled to the Cape Cod destination starting on the Fourth of July weekend.
A total of 346 of those cases, or around three in four patients, were in fully vaccinated people. A majority of those had symptoms and nearly all had the delta variant. However, no deaths were reported and only five were hospitalized, suggesting the vaccine’s goal of reducing the severity of the disease remained successful.
An internal document within the agency recently urged health officials to step up their warnings around the virus, acknowledging that “the war has changed” in light of the new highly-contagious delta variant.
Beyond merely measuring the amount of virus someone is carrying, scientists would need to confirm the risk by culturing live virus from a specimen, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health told CBS News.
However, the investigation’s findings add to a growing body of evidence that has spurred federal health officials to ramp up their guidance to curb surging cases of the delta variant around the country.
The CDC is scheduled to publish data Friday that will back Walensky’s controversial decision to change guidance for fully vaccinated people. She said Tuesday the CDC was recommending that even fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in places where transmission of the virus is sustained or high.
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“The measures we need to get this under control — they’re extreme. The measures you need are extreme,” Walensky told CNN.
She said the data in the report did not surprise her. “It was the synthesis of the data all in one place that was sobering,” she said.
CDC updates guidance, recommends vaccinated people wear masks indoors in certain areas
The CDC presentation says the Delta variant is about as transmissible as chickenpox, with each infected person, on average, infecting eight or nine others. The original lineage was about as transmissible as the common cold, with each infected person passing the virus to about two other people on average.
That infectivity is known as R0.
“When you think about diseases that have an R0 of eight or nine — there aren’t that many,” Walensky told CNN.
And if vaccinated people get infected anyway, they have as much virus in their bodies as unvaccinated people. That means they’re as likely to infect someone else as unvaccinated people who get infected.
But vaccinated people are safer, the document indicates.
“Vaccines prevent more than 90% of severe disease, but may be less effective at preventing infection or transmission,” it reads. “Therefore, more breakthrough and more community spread despite vaccination.”
It says vaccines reduce the risk of severe disease or death 10-fold and reduce the risk of infection three-fold.
What the CDC’s ‘substantial’ and ‘high’ levels of Covid-19 transmission actually mean
The presentation also cites three reports that indicate the Delta variant — originally known as B.1.617.2 — might cause more severe disease.
The CDC, the document advises, should “acknowledge the war has changed.” It recommends vaccine mandates and universal mask requirements.
The virus is once against surging across the US — especially in areas where fewer people are vaccinated.
The US averaged more than 66,900 new daily cases over the last week — an average that’s generally risen since the country hit a 2021 low of 11,299 daily cases on June 22, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Earlier Thursday, President Joe Biden announced a number of new steps his administration will take to try to get more Americans vaccinated, including requiring that all federal employees must attest to being vaccinated against Covid-19 or face strict protocols.
“This is an American tragedy. People are dying — and will die — who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die,” Biden said during remarks at the White House. “Read the news. You’ll see stories of unvaccinated patients in hospitals, as they’re lying in bed dying from Covid-19, they’re asking, ‘Doc, can I get the vaccine?’ The doctors have to say, ‘Sorry, it’s too late.’ “
