Worried—We are now seeing lots of outdoor-only #DeltaVariant transmission between strangers with no direct contact. These sports attendees weren’t even sitting together—likely fleeting transmission at “pinch points” (bottlenecks) at stadium🏟 gates. This would change everything.
2) We’ve seen mega outbreaks at outdoors music concerts in Netherlands for example…
3) there is now a new outdoor masking requirement in NSW Australia 🇦🇺 because of this outdoors risk.
4) Sporting events also very risky due to after parties and side pub gatherings. This was my main worry before. But seeing the NSW 🇦🇺 cases of sport spectators having no other contact worries me.
5) the Netherlands concert was part of this surge. We can’t have these large gatherings amid #DeltaVariant I worry. India 🇮🇳 epidemic was also spurred by religious gatherings — which were almost all outdoors too. Now making more sense how India had such a huge outbreak.
6) Also the Scotland vs England soccer ⚽️ game likely contributed to this mega outbreak too. Again mainly outdoors.
7) How is outdoor transmission even possible with #DeltaVariant but wasn’t possible before? Well, bad news from Guangdong CDC—“The viral loads in Delta infections were ~1000 times higher than (earlier) strain infections [on day 1 of positive test].” ⚠️wow.
virological.org/t/viral-infect…
8) #DeltaVariant also yields faster peak viral load—“results showed the time interval from the exposure to first PCR positive in the quarantined population was 6.00 (IQR 5.00-8.00) days in the 2020 epidemic and was 4.00 days in the 2021 epidemic (peak at 3.71 days).” 👀 damn.
9) as result, “In response to this notable viral parameter, the government required people leaving the Guangzhou city from airports, train stations and shuttle bus stations to show proof of a negative COVID-19 within 72 hours on June 6 and further shorten into 48 hours on June 7”
10) in light of the above #DeltaVariant data, these partying at a nightclub in London as coronavirus restrictions are lifted by callous Boris Johnson and @sajidjavid are pretty insane.
11) several other “fleeting exposures” traced in NSW Australia are pretty worrisome - all were strangers. This has been found multiple times now.
12) This follows the other shopping mall case in which the index case passed within 60 centimeters of another man for mere “seconds”. This is the #DeltaVariant that is dominating UK 🇬🇧, ravaged India 🇮🇳, and surging across Europe and US right now.
13) Want proof of another outdoor fleeting transmission case? Here it is — an outdoor cafe infection of fleeting contact — confirmed via even genomic sequencing to match the exact virus strain!! This is very strong proof it happened. This is why I worry - multiple bad signals.
14) And as reminder — #DeltaVariant is leaps and bounds faster transmission than any other variant. Dr @larrybrilliant, who led smallpox eradication, even says Delta is more transmissible than smallpox!!! And it took his team years to eradicate smallpox!
15) we must be much more vigilant with of our pandemic restriction and be very wary of lifting them when #DeltaVariant is surging. It can quickly get out of control very easy given how infectious it is.
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