We’re going to see a steady drop in COVID transmission in Washington and the U.S. over the next several months, according to the latest projections.
Those models from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation don’t show another U.S. surge from the BA.2 omicron sub-variant like they’ve seen in some European countries, in part because it’s here as we move to more outdoor activities, but the IHME team acknowledges a little bump is possible. The UW Medicine Clinical Virology Lab reports that BA.2 now makes up 25% of the cases it genotypes, which mirrors the national trend. Washington ranks among the top states in terms of the positive COVID tests it genotypes.
With high infection rates and vaccination coverage, IHME’s Doctor Ali Mokdad says we now need to focus on production of anti-virals, like Paxlovid, as well as a system to distribute and then re-distribute them “in case, as we have seen throughout the pandemic, epidemic starts in states at a different level […] so we need to be able not only to distribute but re-distribute in case we need these medications to be moving around within the country” in order to ensure the drugs are where they are needed the most.
Mokdad tells Northwest Newsradio China is a big concern because he and his IHME colleagues don’t believe it can continue to control omicron, so its big surge is coming. China has had a “zero COVID” policy, with short lockdowns followed by multiple rounds of mass testing and then quarantine and isolation. IHME experts believe that’s only delayed China’s omicron surge, which they say could lead to as many as a million deaths in a short time and comes with concern that another new variant could emerge that leads to another surge here.
Two Chinese manufacturers are among those granted intellectual property licenses to make Paxlovid, which IHME suggests could go a long way toward preventing some of those deaths, especially since fewer older people in China have received COVID vaccines.
Read more of IHME’s take-aways from the latest models here.
