Doctors say new COVID-19 variants are more aggressive than other mutations
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Health officials say new coronavirus strains are sweeping the nation after they were first discovered in the United States earlier this year.
News 8 spoke with Dr. Peter J. Plantes, physician executive at software company hc1, who says this should serve as a wake-up call for Hoosiers.
Gillis: We have these new variants in the U.S. that health experts say could be up to 30% deadlier than other strains. What does this mean for Indiana?
Plantes: Think of it as if we are in the middle of a citywide fire and an explosion just happened in a large building. It’s a wake-up alarm in the middle of an already-existing crisis.
So, why this is important is these variants — you’ll hear about the South African variant and the UK variant — have been shown to be slight modifications of the genetic code inside the virus and our vaccines are effective against them, but perhaps a little bit less.
But in terms of how they act … they are more infectious from person to person. It takes less of the virus and less time exposure for the next person to get sick. That means we’re going to have more people with COVID-19 and therefore we’re going to have more people going into the hospital and the ICU and more deaths.
The other part is … in the last week to 10 days we’ve also gotten data that shows that it is more infectious, but it can also cause a slightly more aggressive disease pattern in people. It’s multiplication. More people means the greater likelihood that you’ll get very sick.
So, we’re in a race with the variants. We need to get in front of it with distribution of the vaccine to as many people as possible as fast as possible. And the people who are most at risk are over the age of 65.
Indiana State Department of Health on Wednesday reported 36 more deaths, for a total of 9,713. A total of 631,331 Hoosiers have tested positive for COVID-19.
News 8’s medical reporter, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Gillis, D.Ed., is a classically trained medical physiologist and biobehavioral research scientist. She has been a health, medical and science reporter for over five years. Her work has been featured in national media outlets. You can follow her on Facebook @DrMaryGillis.