Local health officer: Transition from pandemic to endemic won’t be like a ‘light switch’
Feb 2, 2022, 9:59 AM
Nurse Jason Doff, wearing a purified air filtration devise called a PAPR, puts on hand sanitizer after emerging from a room in the acute care COVID-19 unit at the Harborview Medical Center on Jan, 21, 2022, in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
(Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Snohomish County is making its way down the other side of the omicron wave, but challenges remain.
Gov. Inslee hopeful state could reach turning point in pandemic ‘in relatively near term’
Health Officer Dr. Chris Spitters said Tuesday that COVID-19 case rates in Snohomish County are down about 30% from the recent peak.
“For the week ending Jan. 29, they came down about 30, 40%, consistent with projections that the infection wave will pass and decline pretty rapidly here through the early weeks of February,” he said.
But Dr. Spitters also warned people not to start relaxing just yet.
“Although declining, the rate of transmission in the community is still very high and several times higher than previous historical highs,” he said.
Hospitalizations are also down in the county by about a third, but the recent peak in January was twice as high as any previous peak, so the numbers are still quite high.
“The surge is still stretching depleted resources, and our hospital system is still under great stress,” Spitters said.
About 80% of those eligible in the county have had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
UW Virologist: ‘Every chance’ omicron sub-variant precipitates ‘endemic state’ of COVID
While the decline in omicron cases across much of Western Washington has some researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation believing we could be close to shifting from pandemic to endemic stage — where COVID would become more like the seasonal flu — Dr. Spitters says it’s too early to declare victory.
“On many occasions, we prematurely declared victory over COVID. I certainly hope that’s the case, but thus far no wave has been the last one, and I’m a little reluctant to make such a declaration,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s like a light switch — like we were [in a ] pandemic and tomorrow it’s endemic,” Spitters noted. “It’s a transition.”
There are a lot of unknowns about what that transition will look like.
“What the course of nature and the interface between us and the virus is during that transition, I think does remain to be seen,” Spitters added. “We could get another variant that spreads rapidly or that makes people sicker.”
As for the omicron sub-variant seen around the world and in Washington state, Spitters says there are still too many unknowns to make any predictions.
KIRO Newsradio’s Nicole Jennings contributed to this report.
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