Posted on August 3, 2021

By Neil Doyle

PEKIN – The CEO of Reditus Laboratories says the Delta variant has clearly become the “dominant strain” out of its positive COVID-19 samples.

Dr. Aaron Rossi says the Pekin based lab found 347 additional cases of the Delta variant during its sequencing run on July 29, which encompassed 95% of the entire sequenced positives.

The samples sequenced on July 29 were collected from July 2 through July 27, according to a news release Monday. The 347 people were from throughout Illinois, including 30 positives from Bloomington-Normal, 23 from the Peoria area, 25 from the Rockford area, 29 from the Champaign-Urbana area and 100 from the Metro East St. Louis area.

Reditus had reported one case discovered via sequencing in May and two cases discovered through sequencing in June and 64 on its sequencing run on July 16. This means that Reditus has identified 414 cases of the Delta variant, said Rossi.

Variants are of concern because they have shown to be potentially more contagious and may have potential resistance to the vaccines, according to the release.

Neil Doyle can be reached at neil.doyle@cumulus.com https://www.wjbc.com/2021/08/03/reditus-ceo-delta-variant-is-clear-dominant-strain/