Delta Variant in Greece – The Effect on Children

Ekathimerini is reporting that the Delta Variant in Greece is now dominant and has been since the beginning of July.

The Numbers

We compared the case and death figures for under 18s from July 5th to August 22nd, 2021 against Apr 1st to May 10th 2021 to see how different the Delta variant is to previous variants of COVID19. This data is supplied daily by the Greek ministry of health (EODY)

In Brief

The percentage of total cases in the 0-17 age group has increased from 8.8% to 20%

The percentage of total deaths in the 0-17 age group has decreased from 0.03% of deaths to 0% of deaths.

In short, the case fatality rate of the Delta variant, from July 5th to August 22nd, in Greece, was zero.

Other Age Groups

The table below shows the changes in cases, deaths and case fatality, by age groups for Apr 1st to May 10th and for the July 5th to August 22nd time periods.

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Percentage of Cases Change

	%age of all cases, Apr 1st – May 10th	%age of all cases, July 5th to August 22nd	Change
0-17yrs	8.8%	20%	+11.2
18-39yrs	33.7%	49.4%	+15.7
40-64yrs	41.8%	24.6%	-17.2
65yrs & above	15.7%	5.9%	-9.8

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Percentage of Deaths Change

	%age of all cases, Apr 1st – May 10th	%age of all cases, July 5th to August 22nd	Change
0-17yrs	0%	0%	0
18-39yrs	0.8%	1%	0.2
40-64yrs	16.8%	16%	-0.8
65yrs & above	82.4%	83%	0.6

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Case Fatality Rate Change

	%age of all cases, Apr 1st – May 10th	%age of all cases, July 5th to August 22nd	Change
0-17yrs	0%	0%	0
18-39yrs	0.1%	0%	-0.1
40-64yrs	1.2%	0.3%	-0.9
65yrs & above	15.9%	6.5%	-9.4

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Delta Variant Greece – Conclusions

What can conclusions can we draw from these figures?

The 0-17yrs old age group have been basically unaffected by COVID19 throughout the pandemic, in regards to deaths, and the tiny effect it has had is reducing even more as the Delta variant becomes the dominant strain.

Some Perspective

In the 5th of July to 22 of Aug period total cases in this age group was 26202, for April 1st to May 10th total cases were only 8522.

Yet the deaths in the April 1st to May 10th period was 1 and in the July 5th to August 22nd period there were zero deaths. And this is despite there being an over 300% rise in the number of cases.

In children, going by the Greek data, the Delta variant appears to be massively less problematic for children than the other variants and the other variants themselves were a negligible problem for children.

Other Age Groups

Generally speaking, the case fatality rate has been extremely low in the under 64s. And if we break the 40-64 age group down further we will see the majority of deaths in this age group occurred in those over 50 years old.

I see no evidence to suggest the Delta variant is worse than previous variants, even in unvaccinated parts of the population ie under 18s and I would go as far as to say, the Delta variant is less of a problem than previous variants.

Vaccinated

In vaccinated age groups eg the 40-64yr olds, the fatality rate has dropped by 75%.

If we assume that around 50% of that age group is vaccinated and that the vaccine is 100% effective and that the vaccinated are not testing positive, we would expect to see the fatality rate increase if the Delta variant was more problematic. In reality we are seeing the exact opposite indicating Delta much less of a problem due to the 75% drop in fatality rate.

Alternatively

If we assume the vaccinated can test positive and that 50% of people are vaccinated and that the vaccine is 100% effective, we would expect to see this fatality number to drop by 50%.

But the fatality rate has actually dropped by 75% which also indicates the Delta variant is Greece is less problematic.

In either scenario the Delta variant appears to be better than the previous variants.

In short, it appears that for all age groups, including children, using the data presented by the EODY, the Delta variant is much less problematic for all age groups.

A Proviso

One proviso we would have for this is that we are in the summer whereas the other variants were dominant in the winter, it is possible that the Delta variant will be aggravated by cold weather and people’s behaviour in cold weather.

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