State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter continues to come on my show to provide the latest information on COVID in Louisiana and around the world. While the Omicron variant is still surging in the state, there is optimism among experts, since this variant typically has a milder effect on those who contract it. The trouble with Omicron has been how easy it is to transmit from person to person. And now comes the news that a subvariant of Omicron has been detected.
What is the latest on the Omicron numbers in Louisiana?
We're still in the process of peaking. The number of new cases diagnosed each day has gone down a little bit, but the state still has more than 2,000 hospitalizations… I do think that the worst of this particular surge is past us, although we’re going to remain at a pretty high level for probably the next couple weeks. There's just going to be a lot of ongoing transmission until we can get back down to a lower level.
A number of states are reporting an increase in COVID deaths. Is that because of the prevalence of Omicron? What's Louisiana’s experience in that regard?
That’s the catch-22 with the Omicron variant. On average, it’s milder and the mortality rate has gone down, but so many more people are getting infected and dying. Also, it's challenging when you talk about deaths, when we’re in the middle of a surge, because deaths really are a lagging measure. It takes time for coroners to investigate and report those to the Office of Public Health. You typically don't find out about a COVID death until a couple weeks after it happened.
A lot of folks are talking about a new subvariant of Omicron. What are you hearing about this?
The basic Omicron variant that’s causing the surge now is referred to as BA-1. There's a BA-2 that contains a few additional mutations on it. It's not unexpected that we would have a variant of a variant - that's the way these things go. In Louisiana, we've identified five cases of this BA-2 and there’s about 1,100 cases identified worldwide. It's only accounting for about 1% of all the new cases of COVID globally and it hasn’t shown to be more transmissible or more virulent. The caveat here is doctors and scientists still need time to watch it and see what it does.
Could the measures that are being taken in Hong Kong determine the transmissibility of this Omicron subvariant?
We never can really know if what China is reporting is true. It has been reported that China locks down large cities after two cases are reported. They might be setting themselves up for a lot of disease down the road because they have a big population that isn’t exposed and it’s believed that the Chinese vaccine doesn’t work that well.
What are the facts out there about taking Ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID?
It’s not a successful therapeutic drug. The data behind it just isn’t supportive. There's really low quality studies that have cherry picked some data, but the better studies have shown no benefit to taking ivermectin. In medicine, when you have no benefit from a medication then all you're left with is risk.
