By Mallory Rohe
On July 15th, the Fishers Health Dept. released a video on YouTube with information about the delta variant of COVID-19 and precautions against it.
“The delta variant is of particular concern because it is much more transmissible,” Monica Heltz, the public health director for the FHD, said in the video, “The delta variant is very, very infectious, which means it has a high ability to spread quite quickly and infect people more rapidly.”
As of July 13, Heltz said there have been five reported cases of the delta variant in Fishers. But she cautioned that as of July 2, the Indiana Department of Health has seen an increase of 48 percent in delta across the state, and, among the variants that have been named, almost three quarters of all cases have been delta over the past month in Indiana.
“Not 100 percent of cases are typed, as far as which variant they are, so I can’t tell any individual person what variant they have, (but) we are seeing more (delta variant cases) every week that they’re reported,” Heltz said.
Heltz said the symptoms of the regular COVID-19 strain and the Delta strain vary slightly. Most of the symptoms are the same, such as a fever, a sore throat, and a cough, but the Delta strain also has symptoms of a runny nose, contrast to the loss of taste that the original COVID-19 strain provides.
Heltz also says that the best measure of safety to take against the Delta variant is getting vaccinated, and to continue wearing masks in public spaces.
For more, the entire video is available at: youtube.com/watch?v=MyujogcuyYA.
