Graphic shows where Delta variant is spiking across US

‘It’s displacing other circulating viruses in many states’

(Trevor Bedford/Twitter)

The Delta variant of coronavirus is rapidly spreading across four US states, an expert in virus sequencing has warned, sharing graphs demonstrating the surge in infections.

In a tweet on Thursday, Trevor Bedford, an affiliate associate professor at the department of genome sciences at University of Washington, said the Delta variant, which originated in India, has toppled the Alpha variant, first identified in the UK, as the dominant variant in Arkansa, Colorado, Missouri and Utah.

“We’ve recently seen rapid growth of Delta, where it’s displacing other circulating viruses in many states,” he said.

The “predominance of Delta” in the four states, he said, occurred in just around four weeks, he noted.

Mr Bedford does not say in his tweet where the data stems from, but he was a co-developer of Nextstrain, a platform used by the World Health Organization to track virus outbreaks using publicly available data.

According to charts shared by Mr Bedford, Missouri, a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US, has seen the Alpha variant go from causing 80 per cent of cases in May to 10 per cent of cases in June.

The Delta variant, meanwhile, has gone from causing around 30 per cent of cases in May to more than 80 per cent.

In Arkansas, the Delta variant went up from being behind around 10 per cent of cases in May to nearly 60 per cent in June.

Meanwhile, Colorado and Utah saw similar trends, with the Delta variant being behind fewer than 10 per cent of cases in May and rising up to just over 60 per cent in June in the former state, while the latter saw the variant account for limited cases in May before shooting up to over 70 per cent of cases in June.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said on Wednesday that fully vaccinated people should consider themselves “safe” from suffering the worst impacts of Covid-19.

She said fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks, pushing the current CDC guidance amid calls for a return to mandatory mask-wearing.

Ms Walensky said the CDC’s guidance has not changed, stressing that vaccines are highly effective, even against the more contagious Delta variant.

The Independent has contacted Mr Bedford for comment.