Now or never to halt Delta variant with vaccination

By Dr Marta Illueca

In past installments, I have referred to the issue of the newly vulnerable and Covid-19 in childhood. Today, I am concerned with highlighting the 180-degree turn given by the coronavirus in recent weeks and the radical change in the character of the pandemic.

During the first year of the pandemic, we were at the mercy of an uncontrollable and unpredictable Covid-19, and its helm was in the hands of a multifaceted virus, with a predilection for the elderly, the bedridden and the chronically ill. That original wild strain we have been defeating with vaccines, mitigation measures, but with an unexpected ally, a treacherous and opportunistic enemy the Delta variant,  has practically taken over the world, displacing the other strains, but not yet in Panama.

How to understand viral variants? The variants indicate the coronavirus hobby of playing with selfies or memes that,when making copies of themselves, make spelling mistakes and become mutants. Which APP on their cell phones, they are updated to spread like wildfire.

Right now, here we are fighting mainly South American strains (almost two thirds are Colombian, Brazilian and Andean, according to the Gorgas Memorial Institute). The Delta variant has been limited to few cases from travelers or community transmission with fewer than 30 confirmed cases to date.

We are in the eye of the hurricane and we have to see how we join forces to face the tail of the hurricane. The Delta has created a new pandemic, being highly preventable, but exquisitely in love with the newly vulnerable who are the unvaccinated and those under 50 years of age. For the first time, I have to report that now the roles have been changed with the imminent danger that looms over our children

The Delta variant is opportunistic and is breaking all records, being a thousand times stickier. However, it is very susceptible to vaccines authorized by the main international reference authorities and endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

These vaccines include those from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, available in Panama. Despite the different percentages of effectiveness reported, they provide efficient protection against severity and death from Covid-19.

 I think it would be helpful for many to keep their calculators obsessed with comparing only effectiveness percentages. You have to understand the rules of the game. Effectiveness only indicates the control of transmissibility and does not reflect the main reason for vaccination: to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death from occurring.

The new face of the pandemic primarily oppresses the unvaccinated. More than 90% of current hospitalizations and deaths occur in this group. And once most of the older adults have been vaccinated, the Delta is preparing to gossip with the rest of the population, those under 50 years of age and, more recently, a scourge of childhood begins.

Our children are no longer safe from this disease. In the United States, cases have tripled, climbing from 38,000 to 94,000 in August. Adolescent hospitalizations have doubled, with 40% requiring intensive care and 5% ventilators. The deaths are still few, but this is about to change.

In Panama, the Hospital del Niño eports 378 cases this year, 46% hospitalized, 68 in intensive care and 48 confirmed cases of Multisystemic Inflammatory Syndrome (PIMS) , a severe post- Covid-19 complication . It pains me to say it, but our children  and the future of our society are in danger.

I conclude with a call for sanity for those undecided in getting vaccinated. Gone are the days of the original pandemic,  when you played with the virus and didn’t have to worry about the younger generation. We are in the middle of a new pandemic. The Delta variant is highly respectful of the vaccinated, but makes easy prey of the unvaccinated, the young,and children.

The adverse effects of vaccines are very rare compared to the impending devastation of the Delta variant and its long term aftermath. Covid-19 is getting ready to arm us with a society of new chronic ones, incapacitated by the prolonged effects already well described in medical literature. It is true that many beat Covid-19, but the reality is that many are depleted for months.

The preference not to get vaccinated no longer refers to self-centered decisions. Now it is about a moral and ethical obligation to protect the new victims, our children, our pregnant women and the nucleus of reproductive age and the driving force of our society. We are in time to go to the nearest vaccination center and sweep away the existing strains in Panama, to restrict the raw material from the Delta and the new strains. Panama, we must stop the Delta, now or never.

The author is a pediatrician and research scientist

(La Prensa Aug 15)