As we’ve been reporting for the past couple of weeks, the number of new COVID cases are down along with hospitalizations.
Butler native and Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Amesh Adalja says that people should be encouraged by the news.
“We should be optimistic about this. The Omicron surge was hard, and what’s interesting about Omicron is that is goes through fast cycles. It’s so contagious, it has immune evasive properties that it sort of runs out of people to infect,” Adalja said.
Adalja, who is also a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University, says that the dramatic drop in cases is due in part because of just how infectious the Omicron variant was.
“Hopefully because Omicron infected so many people, it will leave a wake of natural immunity or hybrid immunity in those people that were vaccinated and got breakthrough infections, as well as all of the population immunity we have from vacccines so that we really are on a good trajectory when it comes to COVID-19,” Adalja said.
Adalja said that there will still be COVID cases and deaths, but that hospital capacity concerns should wane because of vaccines, prior immunity and other tools like monoclonal antibodies.
Listen to our full interview with Dr. Adalja below:
