The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has swept the planet, becoming the dominant variant within just a few months. A new study from Boston Children’s Hospital, published in Science, explains why Delta spreads so easily and infects people so quickly. It also suggests a more targeted strategy for developing next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
Last spring, study leader Bing Chen, PhD, showed how several earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants (alpha, beta, G614) became more infectious than the original virus. Each variant acquired a genetic change that stabilized the spike protein on the virus’s surface, the protein on which current vaccines are based.
But the Delta variant, which emerged soon after, is the most infectious variant known to date. Chen and colleagues set out to understand why.
“We thought there must something very different happening, because Delta stands out among all the variants,” Chen says. “We found a property that we think accounts for its transmissibility and so far appears to be unique to Delta.”
