Not Many Left To Infect: Omicron To ‘Come Down As Fast As It Went Up’

Medical experts and researchers are looking at the possibility that the Omicron COVID-19 variant may start peaking in the United States soon, with one expert suggesting that this variant’s wave will dramatically drop off as fast as it spread in hard-hit countries.

Ali Mokdad, a professor of Health Metrics Sciences at Seattle’s University of Washington, said the Omicron wave will “come down as fast as it went up,” The Patriot-News reported. Some scientists are studying if the Omicron wave in the U.K. may have peaked, possibly signaling a similar trend in the U.S., considering that the highly contagious variant has already infected so many people and it may be running out of individuals to affect.

In the University of Washington’s COVID-19 model, it was predicted that daily reported cases in the U.S. will reach their peak by Jan. 19 at 1.2 million cases then plummet rapidly “simply because everybody who could be infected will be infected,” Mokdad explained.

Similarly, the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium also projected the peak of reported cases to take place anytime this week.

In South Africa, where the “variant of concern” was first detected in November, officials said before the new year that the country may have passed the peak of its Omicron wave as it already recorded lower hospitalization rates than were logged in previous waves, BBC News reported.

With Britain recording a drop of about 140,000 coronavirus cases a day in the past week from 200,000 per day in the first week of January, hopes are high that both the U.S. and the U.K. will see a similar trend of a sudden downtrend in new daily cases as reported in South Africa after the peak.

So far, good signs are showing in New York as the city saw a drop in emergency care visits linked to COVID-19 in the past week. The 7-day average in COVID-19 emergency visits declined by 35%, data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bloomberg reported.

The data on positive tests from the city also appeared to decline at 31% last Thursday from the peak of 34% on Jan. 2, but city officials noted that the data can still be revised in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Dr. William Moss, the executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said an Omicron-targeted vaccine was needed during the Christmas season. “It still could be valuable but I do think in many ways, it’s too late,” he argued.

His comments came after Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC earlier this week that an Omicron-specific vaccine will be ready by spring.

Infectious disease epidemiologist, Dr. Shaun Truelove, echoed Moss’s sentiments, pointing out that the variant’s speed in spreading may not allow for the Omicron-focused vaccine to be of much help if it is distributed months later as “everybody’s going to be infected.”