The highly contagious Delta variant could soon become the dominant strain of coronavirus in the U.S., the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
“It’s more transmissible than the Alpha variant, or the U.K. variant, that we have here,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky told ABC News in an interview on “Good Morning America.” “We saw that quickly become the dominant strain in a period of one or two months, and I anticipate that is going to be what happens with the Delta strain here.”
The Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2, is the most worrying of the lineage of the virus, wreaking havoc earlier this year in India, where it was first identified in late 2020. Since then, the variant has spread to almost 70 countries, including the U.S.
The latest CDC data estimates the Delta variant makes up 9.9% of reported U.S. Covid-19 cases, while Alpha stands at 65.5%. It is difficult to know the real prevalence of new coronavirus variations due to the relatively low amounts of genetic analysis being done on the virus.
Delta is already the dominant strain in the U.K., where a rise in new Covid-19 cases linked to the variant recently prompted Prime Minister Boris Johnson to postpone a planned lifting of public-health restrictions by four weeks.
