the beginning of this virus. dr. collins, it is a pleasure to see you again. let s please talk about the delta virus. first of all, i missed the day when we stopped calling them various things and went to the greek alphabet. we have this delta virus and people i ve talked to have said it s a little more worrisome. it s been defined by the cdc as a variant of concern. tell me what we need to know about this, please, sir. well, you re right, the terminology has gotten people a little confused. we used to call this b 1617.2, but that was unwieldy. now it s just called delta. this is the virus that ran through the country of india with terrible consequences in terms of high death rates and high transmissibility. it has moved out of india into other parts of the world. the uk is overrun with this variant, it s the main one you see. here in the u.s. it s coming up quickly. it s about 10% of the the isolate and people are
professor of medicine and fox news contributor. what do we need to know about this variant? good morning, dana. this variant is called the 1617.2. the delta variant. what s concerning is it s 60% of the cases in the united kingdom. bad news is that the pfizer or moderna shot if you only have one dose gives you 33% protection. that s laboratory estimate. but after your second dose two weeks after you are over 80% protected. what does that mean? that means if you are fully vaccinated with an mrna vaccine against the variant the chances are high you won t get it and if you got it you would get only a mild case. that s why the call to arms if you haven t been vaccinated, get vaccinated now. get fully vaccinated as soon as possible. the chances are this variant will take hold here. it is already started to spread in the united states. dana: call to arms indeed. guns out to get your shot.
now is the time. how much more worried about that strain should we be than any others? yeah, so i m incredibly worried. we ve been following this variant, the delta variant b.1617.2 and because in the u.k., kasie, we saw it proliferate over a matter of days and that is a dramatic increase. even the variant that we used to call the u.k. variant or alpha variant. so it s something that we re paying attention to. good news, all three of the current vaccines seem to work against this current variant but kasie, we re constantly flirting at the edges. we need to make sure that every vaccine is in american s arms so that we don t allow these variants to further mutate and become different variants that are worse. all right. dr. patel, thank you as always for your expertise. stay tuned. up next, chuck todd will speak to dr. fauci about america s