The United States has turned the corner on the unprecedented wave of infections caused by the omicron Covid variant as new cases have plummeted from a record set just five weeks ago.
As the nation emerges from the omicron wave, the U.S. and state leaders are trying to move past the crisis that has gripped everyone since the Pandemic began two years ago. Public health leaders have begun to plan for a manageable risk of the virus in the future.
The US is reporting about 84,000 new cases per day, down from a high of more than 800,000 daily cases in January. The decline is widespread across the nation, with average daily cases down by at least 40% in all U.S. regions over the past two weeks.
Hospitalizations have fallen. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the number of patients in US hospitals with Covid has fallen from a peak of 159,000 in January.
The Covid death toll is elevated but showing signs of easing. The average daily deaths reached their highest point in about a year on Feb. 1 at nearly 2,600 per day.
While we are not where we want to be yet, we are encouraged by the dramatic declines we are seeing in cases and hospitalizations nationwide.
The omicron variant caused a surge in infections that reached a peak of 802,000 by mid-January, and then fell just as quickly.
While the U.S. is moving in the right direction, Nuzzo warned that the omicron subvariant BA.2 could slow the recovery. The original omicron strain is currently circulating at a low level in the U.S., but BA.2 is more transmissible.
I don't think that BA.2 will cause a huge spike in the population, because there is probably a fair amount of immunity after that.
Infections remain an important early warning sign, but hospitalizations and deaths are the most important indicator of how the U.S. should respond to Covid moving forward. Omicron doesn't make people as sick as the delta variant, so infection numbers alone don't provide a full picture of how the epidemic is impacting society.
Nuzzo said that the U.S. now has the ability to focus its response on protecting people with compromised immune systems.
Nuzzo said that we are in a different state now than we were in 2020. We have more abilities to target our resources.
California is the first state to roll out a plan to deal with the virus as an ongoing manageable risk. The tools developed over the past two years were used to prepare as much as possible for an uncertain future.
At the beginning of the crisis, we didn't understand that there was no end date, and there is not a moment when we should declare victory.
The California plan relies on wastewater surveillance to detect rising viral transmission early. If state health officials pick up a signal, they would use genetic sequencing to determine if a new variant is circulating. Within 45 days, they would determine if the current vaccines, testing and therapies are still effective against the strain. Surge testing and health-care staff would be added by the state.
People are eager to get rid of public health measures. The universal mask mandates for indoor public places in New York and California are set to expire this month. In March, New Jersey will no longer have a school mask requirement.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said earlier this month that this is not a declaration of victory but an acknowledgment that we can live with it.
It makes sense to lift mask mandates in states with high levels of vaccination. She said wearing a mask in crowded indoor spaces is still a good idea.
We're not saying you don't need to wear masks. We are not making it the job of a person in the Starbucks to yell at someone and call the police because they are not wearing a mask.
The mask guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon be updated. The CDC recommends that everyone, regardless of vaccine status, wear masks indoors in areas of high viral transmission. According to CDC data, nearly every county in the U.S. still has high transmission.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said last week that the public health agency will focus more on hospital admissions when issuing guidance on how to deal with the virus in the future.
Walensky told the public during a White House Covid update Wednesday that hospital capacity is an important barometer.
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