Top advisors to Gov. Lamont express optimism that the current COVID surge is waning, but they also believe the virus is here to stay.
State Department of Public Health (DPH) Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani and former FDA chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb spoke during the governor's latest Zoom call with reporters, heard live on WTIC NewsTalk 1080.
Connecticut's latest 24-hour COVID positive test rate is 13.3%, continuing a downward trend. "We have a rapidly improving picture around the Tri-State region," says Gottlieb, "certainly around the state, but we're not through this by any means."
He predicts that Omicron could remain the dominant variant as COVID transitions to "endemic" status, as a regular part of our environment like other recurring respiratory viruses: "There's a conventional wisdom right now forming... that this Omicron wave may well be the last major wave of infection, this may become the dominant lineage as we go forward, and we're going to be heading into more of an endemic picture as we get later into this year." He adds that's not a foregone conclusion.
"We are learning to live with COVID," says Dr. Juthani. "We have so many tools with us now, and I do suspect that we will see surges every wintertime, and that we have to be prepared for that."
Juthani says keeping COVID on the run is a matter of personal responsibility-- increasing public immunity through vaccinations. She and Dr. Gottlieb also predict the virus will become more manageable as treatments such as Pfizer's pill, Paxlovid, become widely available. (Gottlieb is a board member at Pfizer.)
