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Dr. Jha addresses the current ‘state of the pandemic’ — and it’s mostly good news
Barring another surge, people can expect a "reasonably good spring," according to Jha.
The end of the omicron surge is in sight, says Dr. Ashish Jha, though it doesn’t spell the complete end of the pandemic yet.
In a Twitter thread Sunday, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health took a look at the current state of the pandemic across the country. His main point: falling case counts nationally indicate we should have a “reasonably good spring.”
Based on analysis from Covid Act Now, infections are falling in 47 states and have plateaued in the last three, wrote Jha. He said he expects deaths to fall in about a week — currently death counts have largely plateaued at a “horribly” high level, Jha wrote, but usually lag behind case counts falling by about three weeks, so a change should come soon.
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He added that he expects death trends to vary by state because highly vaccinated states don’t have the same death rates as in less vaccinated rates.
Jha wrote that he is “skeptical” the subvariant of omicron, BA.2 — recently detected in Massachusetts — will cause another surge. He said that while it is more contagious and it slowed the fall of infections in the United Kingdom, our vaccines are still holding up to it.
Assuming his skepticism is well placed and there is not a BA.2 surge, Jha wrote we can expect a decent spring with declining infections and fewer hospitalizations and deaths.
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“End of the pandemic? No. Future variants? Probably,” Jha tweeted. “A time to prepare for the future by building up stocks of tests, masks, therapies, work on better vaccines? Absolutely!”
We are on the declining end of the omicron surge, according to Jha, with some places back to pre-omicron levels of infection.
A summer surge in the south is not out of the question, according to Jha, and another variant is likely.
“What happens further down the road [is] hard to predict,” Jha said. “And so, let’s worry less about predicting. And focus on preparation. I don’t know if/when next variant comes. Let’s get ready.”
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