I was sitting one morning just sipping my morning cup of coffee when a news article caught my eye, “ New COVID variant identified: Cases rising in UK.”
“Oh no, not again”. That was my first reaction. It has been 2 years of uncertainty and hopelessness. Just unpleasant times and stories. Unexplainable sorrow, guilt and non-stop exhaustion.
Why again? It makes no sense for me to question this actually. I know how viruses are. I know about the complicated terms like antigenic drifts and shifts. I understand mutations and vaccines. I know how things work with viruses. And yet, when faced with a news you don’t expect to see ( or see so soon atleast) all logic and knowledge just fails to be an argument. And one goes into the why me? Why now? Why this zone.
I moved to UK last year, and have been working in NHS for the last few months. The number of COVID cases peaked in January here. This was shortly followed by a new Omicron wave in India as well. Soon after we saw the cases go down, hospital admissions fell, over all deaths due to COVID reduced, so much so that UK introduced the living with COVID measures. No masks, No isolation, No restrictions.
And now the cases are going up again. On the day of writing this article it is 75000 new cases a day.
It has been reported that there is a new variant that has been found. It is being called Deltacron. It has both genes of Delta and Omicron mutants of the virus. It has been reports in France, Denmark, US and UK so far.
How infectious it is?
If data is to be believed it is infectious. Although is it as infectious as omicron? We don’t know. A lot of countries have removed travel restrictions and we don’t know how many places actually already have the variant.
Do we need to worry about it?
Probably not (yet). Although the number of cases have gone up, there is no report of increased mortality due to it yet. Of course, only time will tell if it is causing serious lung damage or not as there aren’t enough reported cases to be studied.
Won’t vaccines prevent me?
To an extent they will. But every new variant or mutated virus will eventually have a new set of characteristics immune to the vaccine. Even natural immunity against the virus due to a viral infection may not be able to protect against a new variant.
Some countries have completely opened up while others have a lot of restrictions. In these circumstances your best bet is to protect yourself.
This is not the first hybrid variant nor will it be the last. As the virus circulates in the unvaccinated and people with fading immunity, newer strains are bound to come up.
Simple measures of using a mask in public spaces/ crowded spaces especially if you are elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised will help. Hand washing and using a sanitizer are good practices to keep yourself as safe as possible. Avoid visiting households where someone has a cough or cold or if you have one.
COVID has not yet disappeared from our lives. We need to be vigilant. If you have a fever and symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection like running nose, cold, sore throat or cough which is not getting better even after 4-5 days and have breathing trouble please see a doctor.
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