July 19, 2021 3:30 a.m.

The Delta variant has arrived in Douglas County.

County Public Health Officer Dr. Bob Dannenhoffer, and the epidemiology team at Douglas Public Health Network have identified three county residents that have tested positive for the COVID Delta Variant, according to a DPHN release.

The Delta variant was recently identified by U.S. public health officials as the predominant COVID variant in many states, accounting for up to 80 percent of new cases in some areas of the U.S. The release said interviews with the local Delta variant positive patients discovered that they had not been vaccinated, and had recently traveled outside of Oregon to a COVID Delta variant hot spot in the United States.

Dannenhoffer said, “Although this is not surprising, it is disconcerting”. Dannenhoffer said not a lot about this variant is known yet, but it does appear to be more contagious with rapid spread and accounts for the majority of new cases in hot spot states like Arkansas and Oklahoma. He said DPHN had been working actively to get as many patients sequenced as possible with the State Public Health laboratory, in order to gain a better understanding of how variants are affecting the local case load.