The Case for Cautious COVID Optimism This Winter

At this time last year and two years ago, daily new infections and covid-related hospitalizations were already accelerating at a fast clip. BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, the latest Omicron subvariants, came to comprise the majority of cases during a relative lull in the pandemic. Combined with a Thanksgiving Holiday that saw the most travelers since the pandemic started, there has been a steady increase in covid metrics. However, there are many reasons to be optimistic. A combination of factors—a high level of population immunity, Omicron family antigenic drift, convergence of mutations that seem to have hit an evolutionary ceiling, almost nonexistent severe covid illness in the hospital, and viral interference from RSV and Influenza surges—means we are in a surprisingly good place with COVID-19 in winter 2022-23. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Antigenic drift The first two pandemic years were marked by surge after surge driven by variants of entirely new lineages. But since South African researchers first identified Omicron one year ago, we have seen subvariants exclusively from that lineage. This antigenic drift, while spawning an alphabet soup of approximately 500 subvariants, has actually generated less and less impactful waves as population level immunity to Omicron grew. The most recent summer wave driven by BA.4 and BA.5 did not lead to a significant surge of hospitalizations or deaths in the U.S. Before the Omicron winter surge a year ago, only 1 in 3 pe...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 freelance Source Type: news