Local health officials predict another significant COVID surge starting in a matter of weeks.
We’re not only looking at the potential for a bad flu season after what the Southern Hemisphere saw, says King County Health Officer, Doctor Jeff Duchin, but he says we’re likely to follow Europe’s current rise in COVID cases and do it without a new, more infectious variant surpassing BA.4 and BA.5 as the predominant variant. Influenza hits the Southern Hemisphere months earlier than it takes hold here, so it’s often used as a predictor of what’s to come when our winter arrives. Throughout the pandemic, Europe has been like a canary in a coal mine, with surges in the U.S. following those in Europe by a few weeks.
Duchin says the rate of people getting the new booster is also low, including just 29% of those age 65 and older who are among those at highest risk, so he says if more don’t get it, “we may see a large number of preventable, serious health consequences from COVID-19 this fall and winter. This includes severe COVID-19 causing hospitalizations and deaths, preventable cases of Long COVID and stress on our health care system.”
With 30 concerning new variants already out there and under monitoring by the World Health Organization, we asked if a return to mask mandates is a thing of the past with so many people vaccinated. Duchin tells Northwest Newsradio it would be a steep hill to climb to get people to accept a return to mandates, but nothing is off the table in order to protect the health care system and the population from a health disaster. “Outside of the health care setting, mandates are not being considered, but the virus is unpredictable,” Doctor Duchin says, “and, you know, I’m hoping we would never get to the place where that type of thing would be necessary again.” However, Duchin also says he believes we will see another so-called “escape variant”, which can evade vaccines and get right past the immunity one gets following a COVID infection. Duchin says most, if not all of those 30 variants of concern are derivative of the Omicron variant, and it appears the new, bi-valent booster shot will provide protection. It’s also hoped it will provide broader protection, but that remains to be seen. Duchin says there is a sufficient supply of the new booster for anyone eligible to get it easily.
Duchin says in addition to vaccines, we still need what he calls a “vaccines plus” strategy. He continues to call on you to mask up when with indoor crowds, to avoid them when possible and to continue efforts to improve indoor ventilation. All of it, he says, could save lives and prevent further strain on the health care system at a time when COVID and flu could already add to that strain.
Duchin also updated the status of King County’s Monkeypox outbreak. He says the new case rate has fallen from about 60 per week in the summer to what appears to be a steady 10 per week now. Duchin also says the Monkeypox is more readily available, so anyone who’s eligible should be able to get the shots relatively easily.
