As for the U.S., IHME’s Doctor Christopher Murray says we’ve yet to see a BA.2 surge. “There are some states where we’re seeing hospitalization number admissions go up slightly,” Murray says, “but not seeing the reported cases go up. So, it may be that there is a small increase coming in some states.”
The IHME team is also watching China, where they expected a surge with an increase in deaths because of poor vaccination coverage among elderly people, but Murray says China’s Zero-COVID policy, with strict lockdowns for regional outbreaks, has interrupted transmission – although they expect a China surge in the fall.
Murray says in other parts of the world, they’re not seeing an evidence of a BA.2 secondary surge, even in countries like South Africa, where most of the cases are BA.2. He says the difference across countries may have to do with population level immunity, prior infection, how much the first Omicron wave affected people, etc., so in places where there’s a lot of transmission, they still probably won’t see a BA.2 “hump” in the curves.
Murray says there’s still a lot of talk about getting the vaccines to as many people as possible, but he says IHME’s future models will include a scaling up of production of anti-viral drugs, like Paxlovid, or others that might emerge. He says they believe those anti-virals will make the difference in terms of protection against death from COVID compared to the vaccines providing that protection.
