You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey everybody, Maddie Sifaya here and today we're joined by an old friend of the show,

Atlantic Science writer Ed Young.

So Ed, anything, any big personal accomplishment since we've had you on the show or...

I got a dog.

He also got a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

His most recent coronavirus reporting is about the Delta variant.

Delta was first identified in India.

It's been incredibly well characterized.

A strain of the coronavirus that has rapidly spread throughout many countries, including

the U.S.

Where it is already picking up a lot of steam.

Delta is the predominant variant here in the United States.

As the Delta variant spreads primarily through areas with low vaccination rates, half the

states now reporting an increase in new cases.

Hospital admissions also starting to take higher now up 7% to 2000 a day here in the U.S.

The Delta variant has spread so fast because it is much more contagious than any of the

other strains we've been up against so far.

The alpha variant which people were very worried about earlier on in this year was already

far more transpissible than the original of the Nellah SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Delta is even more transmissible than that by anywhere from 35 to 60 percent depending

on the study that you're looking at.

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