(Image from UW Medicine/Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation)
The COVID modelers at the University of Washington say they expect we’ll see another new variant, but they say it doesn’t necessarily mean another pandemic step backward.
The team at UW Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation says we’re in a “new normal” of pre-COVID levels of interaction and less mask-wearing, with Omicron expected to make a winter comeback if there’s no new variant, but IHME’s Doctor Christopher Murray says a new variant is likely, and he hinted that masks and other mandates could return when he said we need to think about how we manage future surges.
Murray says with vaccines, boosters and anti-viral drugs, they don’t expect things to be as bad as we’ve seen, “but it should give us pause,” Murray says, “to recognize the threat that we live with in the future for either some remarkable new variant that will break through our current tools entirely or just new pathogens, new pandemics in the future.”
IHME predicts Washington State will see another 276 COVID deaths between now and August 1st, but the projections show 144 of those lives could be saved if 80% of us mask up.
Murray says reaching the milestone of one-million U.S. COVID deaths is shocking to them because IHME expected the total to be roughly 10% of that.
He says with excess deaths, they believe the actual total is closer to 1.3 million.
Meanwhile the bump in new COVID cases in the state’s most populous county appears to be leveling off.
King County is still in the Centers for Disease Control’s “medium risk” community category because its 7-day new case rate is almost 328 per-100-thousand people.
Interim King County Health Director, Dennis Worsham, says what appears to be a plateauing of new case numbers isn’t the only bit of good news.
Worsham says hospital capacity is in good shape, and they have not seen a significant increase in COVID hospitalizations in this mini surge. “The dominant strain that is in play right now is what we call a ‘BA.2’. It’s an offspring, if you will, of the Omicron,” Worsham says, “We had such high exposure in our first round, we’re seeing natural immunity certainly playing a factor in less severe illnesses this time.”
Worsham says an vaccination rate for the first two doses of 86% also helps, but he says there’s still room to grow on boosters with only 58.7% of those eligible having taken theirs, so the county health department encourages you to get those shots and to keep wearing your mask in crowded indoor spaces even if you’re vaccinated.
This comes as the Food and Drug Administration approves COVID boosters for 5-to-11 year olds. Worsham says they’re watching as the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) takes up the booster question for that age group. If ACIP gives the green light, the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup will likely be quick to follow so kids can start getting those third shots as soon as possible.
