SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – As the United States settles into a COVID-19 plateau, health experts are having a difficult time predicting when the next spike might happen — and how bad it will be.
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Dr. Robert Siegel, a professor of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, told KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" he hopes the case rates and hospitalizations start to go down, as the numbers are still high despite a plateau.
"Right now as a plateau, just to give some perspective, we are looking at a daily number of hospitalizations of 40,000 people and 400 deaths. That turns out to be about 146,000 deaths a year, so it’s still very concerning to have this level of infection," Siegel said.
To contextualize the COVID-19 numbers, the Stanford professor explained that COVID-19 in 2022 is four times worse than a typical influenza year. "This is not in place of influenza," he added. "This is in addition. These are additional deaths. That huge number of hospitalizations impacts all aspects of healthcare."
Some health experts believe the United States may soon see a downturn in infections, but Siegel warned there are a handful of components looming that could cause the opposite.
"The problem right now is that there's a number of factors that may increase the number of infections coming up, namely the beginning of the school year, the relaxation of various requirements… there will be no required masks in most of the classrooms," he explained.
According to a recent survey from Harvard and UCSF, 40% of Americans say they have returned to their "pre-pandemic" lives, casting COVID-19 fears to the side, despite the continually high case rates.
"I think it's a little early to put the guard down, we seem to be putting our guard down, but it's a little early for that given the high level of infections," Siegel said. "If things are at a plateau for a certain period of time, that seems to feel normal, whereas this level of infection early in the pandemic would’ve felt like it was horrible."
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