ArticleScientific reports2022
Infections with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant exhibit fourfold increased viral loads in the upper airways compared to Alpha or non-variants of concern.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Variant-Specific Viral Kinetics in Acute COVID-19.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2023Trial
- Review
- Particulate matter exposure potentiates SARS-CoV-2 delta variant infection by suppressing epithelial antiviral responses.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Viral load dynamics in asymptomatic and symptomatic patients during Omicron BA.2 outbreak in Shanghai, China, 2022: A longitudinal cohort study.Virologica Sinica · 2024Article
- Spatiotemporal evolution and transmission dynamics of Alpha and Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants contributing to sequential outbreaks in Cambodia during 2021.Communications medicine · 2024Article
- Navigating the COVID-19 Therapeutic Landscape: Unveiling Novel Perspectives on FDA-Approved Medications, Vaccination Targets, and Emerging Novel Strategies.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Human and hamster sera correlate well in identifying antigenic drift among SARS-CoV-2 variants, including JN.1.Journal of virology · 2024Article
- Article
- Antigenic cartography using hamster sera identifies SARS-CoV-2 JN.1 evasion seen in human XBB.1.5 booster sera.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Analysis of two sequential SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks on a haematology-oncology ward and the role of infection prevention.Infection prevention in practice · 2024Article
- The role of vaccines in the COVID-19 pandemic: what have we learned?Seminars in immunopathology · 2024Review
- Article
- Comparison of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in primary human nasal cultures demonstrates Delta as most cytopathic and Omicron as fastest replicating.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Dynamical modelling of viral infection and cooperative immune protection in COVID-19 patients.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- A neonatal mouse model characterizes transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 variants and reveals a role for ORF8.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Risk assessment of banknotes as a fomite of SARS-CoV-2 in cash payment transactions.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2023Article
- Respiratory aerosol particle emission and simulated infection risk is greater during indoor endurance than resistance exercise.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics in bars, restaurants, and nightclubs.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There has been a growing body of evidence that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Delta variant (B.1.617.2) shows enhanced transmissibility and increased viral loads compared to other variants. A recent study has even suggested that respiratory samples from people infected with the Delta variant can harbor up to 1000 times higher viral loads compared to samples with variants that are more closely related to the original Wuhan strain, although the sample size of this study (n = 125) was very limited. Here, we have compared the viral load in 16,185 samples that were obtained in periods during which non-VOC, the Alpha (B.1.1.7) or Delta variant (B.1.617.2) were dominant as evidenced by genomic surveillance. We found that the Delta variant contained about fourfold higher viral loads across all age groups compared to the non-VOC or Alpha variants, which is significantly lower than reported earlier. Interestingly, the increased viral load for the Delta variant seemed to be age-dependent, regardless of sex, as the viral load was about 14-fold higher for Delta compared to the non-VOC or Alpha variant in age group 0-20 years and fourfold higher in age group 21-40 years, while there was no difference in viral load between variants in age groups 41-60 and 61+ years, most likely as a consequence of a higher degree of vaccination in the older age groups.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.