Kona Community Hospital spokesperson Judy Donovan on Thursday reported three individuals hospitalized with two in the intensive care unit.
“At Kona Community Hospital, we continue to see an increased number of COVID-19 positive patients seeking care in our Emergency Department,” Donovan said in a released statement. “We strongly encourage anyone who has been postponing receiving the COVID vaccine to do so now.”
In response to questions about the COVID-19 delta variant, Lynn Reinert MS, RRT-RCP, KCH respiratory care manager and incident command team researcher on Tuesday submitted an evidence-based best practices research summary on the strain.
Reinert stated recent information published by many scientific journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, show the infection rate of the delta variant is significantly higher than previous variants have been.
The delta variant was first discovered in India in December 2020, and since May 19, 2021 it has been found in 43 countries across six continents.
The delta variant has a significantly higher viral load than previous variants. In China, people infected with the delta variant were quarantined and tested daily to measure their viral load. It was found the delta variant had a viral load that was 1000 time higher than the alpha and beta variants. This suggests a potentially faster viral replication in hosts and more infectiousness in early stages of the infection.
Simply put, the delta variant is more infectious earlier in infection than previous variants have been.
Patients were found to have a latent period after infection where the viral load, while building, is still too low to be detected with testing. The viral load at that time is too low to detect but the host is still highly contagious. Infected people are able to infect others in the pre-symptomic stage as in past variants, but the infectiousness of the delta variant makes it much easier to spread to others.
The vaccine has shown to be effective against all variants so far. Small differences between the types of vaccine effectiveness were noted when comparing the delta variant to the alpha variant. This means any vaccine is better than no vaccine at all. The two vaccine types appear to be more effective and offer more protection than a single vaccine. A two vaccine dose is recommended for vulnerable populations.
In the United Kingdom, the delta variant is responsible for 90% of the new cases as of June 2021. Similar findings are occurring in the United States.
The CDC recommends those that have not received the vaccine still have time to protect themselves and should consider doing so.
