PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The number of COVID-19 cases remains high across the region, but the threat of the omicron variant in the Philadelphia area is waning, says KYW Medical Editor Dr. Brian McDonough. And so far, no new variant threats are in sight.
“We hit our peak. We went up, and now we’re starting to go down,” McDonough said. “And in fact, looking at it nationally, it’s ramping up in South Carolina, in Georgia, out on the West Coast. But for the Northeast and Midwest, it’s starting to go down.”
McDonough says health officials have recently learned more from data collected about the omicron variant. For instance, people who are vaccinated and boosted are about 90% less likely to go the hospital for COVID-19. And the antibodies that unvaccinated people develop when they contract the virus tend to be effective for no longer than about three months.
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McDonough says he’s cautiously optimistic about the coming weeks.
“We heard about omicron before it was coming. We kind of knew it was going to happen, and we kind of knew, oh boy, four or five weeks from now we’re going to be there. I don’t see anything like that at this point.”
But it’s not time to get comfortable, he said, as health experts continue to watch the ever-changing virus.
“COVID has thrown us so many curveballs. The minute you think you can predict something, you find that you’re wrong.”
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And he says he is noticing many people suffering from what he calls “COVID burnout.”
“I think that, right now, it’s our biggest enemy. It’s the thought of ‘I can’t take it anymore. I’m going out, and I don’t care,’” he said. “You kind of have to still be smart.”
He says in the late spring and summer, life might begin to feel more like normal for many people. He says he hopes it will get to the point where COVID-19 is treated like the flu, with people getting vaccinated every year.
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