Shift in Demographic Involvement and Clinical Characteristics of COVID-19 From Wild-Type SARS-CoV-2 to the Delta Variant in the Indian Population: In Silico Analysis

The Delta variant (B.1.617.2) was considered the most dangerous SARS-CoV-2 strain; however, in-depth studies on its impact based on demographic and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 are scarce. We aimed to investigate the shift in demographic and clinical characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic with the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant compared with the wild-type (WT) strain (B.1). A cross-sectional study of COVID-19 cases in the Indian population caused by the WT strain (B.1) and Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 was performed. The viral genomic sequence metadata containing demographic, vaccination, and patient status details (N=9500, N =6238, N =3262) were statistically analyzed. With the Delta variant, in comparison with the WT strain, a higher proportion of young individuals (