The country’s daily case rate – about 55,000 a day – is still less than a third of Omicron’s peak, but cases are rising just as quickly as they were dropping just two weeks ago when the country removed epidemic-related restrictions.
The situation in Europe is of interest to public health officials for two reasons: first, the UK offers a preview of what might happen in the US, and second, something unusual appears to be happening. In previous waves, increases in hospital admissions for Covid in cases jumped by about 10 days to two weeks. Now, in the UK, cases and hospitalizations appear to be increasing side by side, something that has baffled experts.
“Obviously, we’re very interested in what’s going on with this,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci said he and colleagues in the UK have talked and linked the height to a group of three factors. Fauci said, in order of contribution, are:
- Variant BA.2, which is more portable than the original Omicron
- Opening up of society where people mingle more indoors without masks
- Weakened immunity from a previous vaccination or infection
Given that BA.2 does not appear to cause more serious disease – at least not in the highly vaccinated British population – it is unclear why hospitalization rates are so high.
“The hospitalization issue is a bit intriguing, because despite the increase in hospitalizations, it is very clear that the use of intensive care beds has not increased,” Fauci said. “So, is the number of hospital admissions a true reflection of Covid cases, or is there a difficulty deciphering between people who have been hospitalized with or because of Covid?”
“Without a doubt, the openness of society and the mix of people within it is clearly a contributing factor, as is lower immunity in general, which means we really have to stay informed and watch the pattern here,” Fauci said. “So we are monitoring this very carefully.”
“It’s like a weather alert. Night, and we just don’t know,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. .
What will BA.2 do in the US?
BA.2 is growing steadily in the United States. Last week, the CDC estimated that it causes about 12% of new Covid-19 cases here.
Meanwhile, BA.2 now accounts for more than 50% of cases in the UK and many other European countries.
“The tipping point appears to be correct about 50%,” said Keri Altoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This is when we really started to see this variant flexing in the population,” as far as its severity goes.
Altov said that while the UK can offer a glimpse into the future, there are important differences that will affect how BA.2 operates in the US.
In the UK, 86% of eligible people are fully vaccinated and 67% boosted, compared to 69% of those vaccinated and 50% boosted in the US.
“What we’re seeing happening in the UK is probably a better story than we’re expecting here,” Altoff said.
She noted that in the Netherlands, it took BA.2 about a month to beat BA.1. If the same schedule occurs in the United States, this means that the variant is taking off at a time when immunity to winter Omicron infection is waning.
“I’m worried about that,” Alof said. “But we were in a similar situation last spring where we were really hoping that things would calm down, we’d have a little summer and then Delta surprised us.”
Altov said it will be important for people to understand that they can take off their masks for a few weeks, but they may also need to wear them regularly if cases increase.
“We may see another wave of disease in our hospitals,” she said.
“Wastewater monitoring is an amazing advance in how we monitor SARS-CoV-2 and what it does in the population without really needing any input from people,” she said. “Wastewater monitoring is an important tool for understanding where the virus is going and whether it is increasing in terms of infection.”
Preparing for the next wave
Protection against the next variant must begin with vaccination.
“We definitely have to keep looking for and vaccinating unvaccinated people,” Altov said.
Fauci agreed that vaccination rates could be better across all age groups, but said the current numbers are particularly bad for children. Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that about 28% of children aged 5-11 years have been fully vaccinated, while 58% of children aged 12-17 have received two doses of the Covid vaccine. .
While younger children under the age of 5 are still not able to be vaccinated, recent studies have shown that young children are less likely to contract Covid-19 when they are surrounded by older children and adults who have been vaccinated.
“The way to protect them is to surround the children as much as possible with the people who have been vaccinated and boost them so that you have a degree of protection around them,” Fauci said.
It will also be important to continue to be flexible.
“The important thing with this huge experiment, where we get rid of all the masking and the restrictions, is that we have to remain diligent in terms of monitoring and testing and be prepared to reverse a lot of the loosening of those restrictions,” Deborah Fuller said. . , a microbiologist at the University of Washington.
“We cannot let our guard down, because the message people get when they say ‘we are lifting restrictions’ is that the pandemic is over,” she said.
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