Delta Variant Comeback Likely in Summer

Hamodia Staff

YERUSHALAYIM – Researchers at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev are saying that the pandemic isn’t over, and that the world could see a resurgence of the Delta variant sometime this summer, The Times of Israel reported on Wednesday.

The research, based on the monitoring of sewage, revealed that even at the height of the omicron wave, the Delta variant was still extant, despite analyses that predicted its disappearance by that time.

Instead, it now appears that Omicron and its subvariants are on the way out, while Delta may be with us for some time to come.

“Our findings highlight that the pandemic is not over and suggest that sooner or later there will be another wave, potentially in the summer or at the end of the summer,” Prof. Ariel Kushmaro, who runs the BGU wastewater lab that conducted the research, told ToI.

Kishmaro said that the implications aren’t confined to Israel, and that the Delta threat is global.

Kushmaro said that Delta’s resilience surprised his team. “In the past, we saw that when one variant rises, others disappear; but this just doesn’t seem to have happened with Delta, which seems to have a certain ability to survive,” he said.

“According to the developed model, it can be expected that the omicron levels will decrease until eliminated, while Delta variant will maintain its cryptic circulation,” they wrote,” referring to circulation undetected by the medical establishment.