Recent variants of COVID-19 have proven to be more infectious than the original strain of the virus, says Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer Professor Allen Cheng.
The Victorian government has faced criticism from infectious disease experts for describing the Kappa variant of the virus as more contagious than previous forms of the virus. However, Professor Cheng says claiming the Indian strain is more infectious is not controversial. "It is not really controversial to say that these variants have been shown to be more infectious," he said.
"The way that’s often looked at is in enclosed areas like in households– what’s the attack rate? What proportion of people in the household get infected? “For the variants, including the Indian variant we are dealing with at the moment, that has been shown to be higher than the strain we were dealing with last year. "The other thing we have seen is that people, like the case that we had today where we linked it, there certainly are people that have been strangers to each other ...
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