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OMICRON another form or variant of the Coronavirus that has mutated as all viruses can do over time.
DR. LUCY MCBRIDE
How transmissible is Omicron compared to Delta?
It’s pretty clear at this point, particularly with the real world data coming out of South Africa this week, that Omicron is more transmissible, more contagious than Delta. So we can expect to see a rise in cases in the United States like we have seen in Europe and in South Africa.
UC HEALTH TODAY
The lab science is starting to catch up. Early petri-dish, animal, and human studies have found that omicron is less prone to settle deep into the lungs, where earlier variants caused the most damage. Current reports have yet peer-reviewed, they do hint at different infection mechanisms driving the often milder omicron disease.
Dr. Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth and a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Barron: “I think everybody’s tired. I think there’s a sense of weariness,” she said.
But she added that January 2022 is not January 2021. “We have vaccines. and We have medications. We know how to treat this now,” she said.
Barron worries about a creeping fatalism manifesting in people seeming resigned to contracting omicron and therefore not bothering to mask, distance, or to get a booster dose. Yet omicron is avoidable, she says, and taking steps to avoid it matters because, in aggregate, doing so can change the trajectory of the pandemic at a moment when that trajectory looks dire. Plus, she says, no one knows the implications of long covid.
MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES SLAMMED
Dr. Laura Sehnert, chief medical officer and emergency medical physician at UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center (YVMC) in Steamboat Springs, says that 32% of the samples collected came back positive during the week ending Jan. 2. How YVMC fares over the next month or so will depend, she said in an email, on “how willing our community is to buckle down and do all of the things we are tired of doing. We need everyone eligible to get vaccinated and boosted. And we need everyone to wear a mask when indoors and in crowds. Plus we need everyone to stay home if feeling ill, test appropriately, and seek medical care as needed.”
