SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – After months of the highest COVID-19 rates in the state, the Bay Area's numbers are on the decline. The COVID-19 numbers are now among the lowest in the state.
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The downturn signals that the surge created by the BA.5 subvariant of the virus has already happened, and the new cases continuing to crop up are likely from people that are prone to reinfection.
"They've gotten reinfected and hopefully they've acquired some immunity from that," said Dr. Dean Blumberg, Professor and Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Health on KCBS Radio's "Ask an Expert" on Monday with Melissa Culross.
"We've seen with other variants that there are various surges that come and go," he said.
As the decline in cases continues, it's hard to predict what the next phase of the pandemic might be.
"In addition to the development of new variants and with BA.5 being a variant that can overcome previous immunity, that was sort of a wildcard that we haven't seen before," said Blumberg.
In addition to that, the level of overall population immunity caused by infection or immunization combined with the increase of large gatherings over the summer created a lot of situations that were difficult to predict.
But what is most important at this stage of the pandemic is to continue to ensure a robust vaccine availability so that people can continue to protect themselves better and keep the supply of masks accessible.
"And then people can make their own decisions in terms of if they are going to be in large crowds," he said, exposing themselves to other people.
A lot of the protections people can use to keep themselves safe from COVID-19 are now entirely up to the individual.
Fortunately, we are on our way to the point where COVID-19 could be in the same tier as getting the flu, or even a cold.
"We do accept that every year in the U.S. for example, about 30,000 people die from influenza," said Blumberg. "And that’s tragic that they die, but that's a risk we do accept and we go about our regular business and our normal social activities."
"At some point, I think COVID-19 is going to be in a similar situation to influenza," he said.
In the meantime, it's important to keep monitoring trends in the virus, as in the past there have also been prolonged periods of relatively low transmission as well as surges.
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