PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A vaccine expert from Philadelphia says if you’re vaccinated, the omicron variant of COVID-19 is no reason to panic.
Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA vaccine advisory board, said the vaccines continue to do their primary job, which is to prevent severe disease or death.
“They've done it for the first variant that came into this country. They've done it for the alpha variant, which is the secondary. They've done it for the delta variant," said Offit.
"They will likely do it for the omicron variant, meaning two doses of vaccine are likely to protect people who are healthy and young from getting serious illness.”
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He recommends boosters for people 65 and older, or with other health issues, including obesity. But he said for the vast majority of healthy, younger people, the two-dose regiment is all the protection needed.
“The goal of vaccines is to keep you out of the hospital, out of the morgue," he said. "Talk to anybody who works in a hospital, they'll tell you that who they're seeing in that hospital are people who are unvaccinated. The same thing if you talk to morticians.”
Offit said if you’re vaccinated, there is no reason to panic as case counts go up — it’s normal and expected to see an increase in respiratory illness like COVID-19 this time of year.
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"We're going to see a spike in cases," he said. "I don't think it will ... nearly approach the spike that we saw last winter when we didn't have a vaccine."
He added that many people were susceptible because they had never been naturally infected.
Offit said COVID-19 is fourth on the list of illnesses bringing patients into CHOP, behind influenza, RSV, and human metapneumovirus.
“Just do everything you can to mitigate risk," he said. "Getting vaccinated obviously is the most important thing you can do.”
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He said if you’re vaccinated and feel sick, get tested to protect those around you and isolate yourself as needed. But he said testing vaccinated and asymptomatic people is probably going a little too far.
"We're just trying to prevent something that's very difficult to prevent, which is an asymptomatic infection or mildly symptomatic," he said. "But at some level, we should be willing to live with that.”
