Covid-19 and different variants.
This week I was supposed to discuss how to make a half a million in a year working as a nurse during Covid-19, however with the severity of Covid-19 I felt that there is an urgent need to update, due to the catastrophic events surrounding Covid-19 and the variants that follow. However, money talks so I will also be putting my half a MILLION-dollar blog out by the end of the week. There is so much information to discuss and I do not want to overwhelm you so I will attempt to be succinct while discussing variants and vaccines.
Quick facts
· All Viruses change overtime and usually they pose little impact on the severity of the virus (meaning that it will not get worse) however with variants it can change the transmission rate, treatment, and how to diagnosis the virus (WHO, 2021).
· There are a variety of Covid-19 variants, currently who has listed these four variants as concerns in the United States. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta however there are other variants that are in the United States which includes the Mu variant and the lambda variant, I mention these two specifically because they have a high resistance to the Covid-19 vaccine. Additional variants include Eta, Iota, and Kappa.
· The United States is the only region that has had an increase in Covid-19 cases with an increased rate of 19% from the previous week, furthermore the death rate in the US has also increased by 17% The current death rate global totality is 4.5 million.
· As of September 14th, there have been 225,024,781 confirmed cases of Covid-19. There has been a total of 4,636,153 as of September 14th. 5,534,977,637 vaccines have been administered. America has the highest number of confirmed cases at 86,674,208 and has the highest number of deaths related to Covid-19 at 2,149,319 (WHO, 2021). This poses major concern for American especially due to the small population percentage that we represent globally.
· The Delta variant is more contagious and is affecting children greater than the alpha variant and is currently responsible for most cases in the USA (Katella, 2021).
· Vaccinations reduce your risk of contracting the virus as well as if infected symptoms will most likely be less severe.
· There is additional information that is put out daily regarding Covid-19 and variants that follow, I encourage you to read articles that are cited, peer reviewed, or on google scholar to get the most accurate information regarding this virus.
· Breakthrough cases have increased, and variants of concern are being monitored closely i.e. delta variant on the effectiveness of the vaccines, although the vaccine are effective the vaccine effectiveness has decreased since the Delta variant has become the predominant strain in the United States (Nanduri et al., 2021).
Types of Vaccines and their effectiveness
In the United States there is one vaccine that is approved by the FDA (Pfizer) in addition there are two other vaccine that have been utilized for emergency usage due to the severity of the disease totaling of three vaccines that have been administered throughout the pandemic. Globally there is a total of 24 different vaccines (WHO, 2021). So how effective are these vaccines for the Delta variant? Moderna and Pfizer were 90% effective in preventing infection that caused Covid-19 however with the delta variant the percentage went down to 79.8% (Fowlkes et al., 2021), (Rosenberg et al., 2021).
References:
Fowlkes, A., Gaglani, M., Groover, K., Thiese, M. S., Tyner, H., Ellingson, K., & Cohorts, H. R. (2021). Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection among frontline workers before and during B. 1.617. 2 (Delta) variant predominance—Eight US locations, December 2020–August 2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 70(34), 1167.
Katella, K. (2021, September 8). 5 things to know about the delta variant. Yale Medicine. https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/5-things-to-know-delta-variant-covid
Nanduri, S., Pilishvili, T., Derado, G., Soe, M. M., Dollard, P., Wu, H., ... & Schrag, S. J. (2021). Effectiveness of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection among nursing home residents before and during widespread circulation of the SARS-CoV-2 B. 1.617. 2 (Delta) variant—National Healthcare Safety Network, March 1–August 1, 2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 70(34), 1163.
Rosenberg, E. S., Holtgrave, D. R., Dorabawila, V., Conroy, M., Greene, D., Lutterloh, E., ... & Zucker, H. A. (2021). New COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among adults, by vaccination status—New York, May 3–July 25, 2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 70(34), 1150.
WHO. (2021, August 19). Covid-19 Vaccines. WHO/OMS: Extranet Systems. https://extranet.who.int/pqweb/sites/default/files/documents/Status_COVID_VAX_19August2021.pdf
WHO. (2021). Tracking SARS-Cov-2 variants. WHO | World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/