(Global daily COVID death projections – photo courtesy UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation)
The public health experts at UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation say in Europe and South Africa, COVID case numbers have peaked and are falling. IHME’s Doctor Christopher Murray says here in the U.S., some states continue to see increases, the Northeast sees declines, but nationally, we’re approaching a peak and should start to see case rates fall. “So we do continue to expect, in the absence of the emergence of a variant with considerable immune escape on omicron,” Murray says, “that we will see quite low numbers for the next few months.
While Murray reminds us that a new variant can turn things on a dime, he says in countries where people have returned to pre-COVID activity levels and low mask-wearing, they expect transmission and death numbers to continue to decline for a few months. IHME chalks that up, in part, to the slow but steady ramp-up of production of anti-viral drugs.
Murray says it might be a different story in China, where he says the country’s “Zero COVID” policy has worked despite the major economic impact of its regional lockdowns when outbreaks hit. Murray says, “The reported cases, as far as we can tell in China, are now down to a very low level, and we do expect in our modeling and continue to expect that it will be hard to sustain that given the considerable number of susceptibles that are still in China.”
Those “susceptibles” include the vast majority of elderly Chinese who, unlike their U.S. counterparts, are not vaccinated.
IHME’s current recommendations include continuing to offer boosters to people who want one, making sure anti-viral drugs are available for people who are infected, and continuing with disease monitoring and surveillance. The team also suggests countries remain ready to bring back mask mandates and other COVID restrictions should a new and troublesome variant come our way.
