Herd immunity still a while away after omicron peak

Add Us On GoogleAdd as a preferred source on Google

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - COVID rates in the Blue Ridge Health District continue to decrease. Doctors say we may have hit the peak of the omicron variant.

The worst of the omicron variant may be gone, but that doesn’t mean we should lose the masks just yet.

“We’ve come down from our peak, but we’re not coming down very fast,” Dr. Reid Adams with UVA Health said.

As of Friday there were still 83 patients in the UVA Medical Center, with COVID. ⅓ are in the ICU and all but one are unvaccinated.

“Far Southwest Virginia hospitalizations are going to lag slightly behind that, as everyone’s seen and heard about,” Dr. Kyle Enfield with UVA Health said. “The caution that I would say is that other regions, including the UK, and other parts of Europe, that hit a peak and sort of coming down, then plateaued a couple of weeks later.”

Virginia Department of Health Veterinary Epidemiologist Brandy Darby says she thinks we are on the downhill slope from the peak, though it is at a slow decrease.

“We’re not really out of the woods yet,” Darby said. “When we look at the measures that feed into how we rate community transmission, community transmission throughout Virginia remains at a very high level.”

Darby says it’s going to take a bit to recover from omicron, partly because this variant has been more transmissible than others. She says it’s not as mild as many have assumed. It has just occurred later than other variants, meaning more people are vaccinated at this point or have some form of immunity.

“The whole dynamic of the pandemic is likely to change in the months to come because of the level of immune protection that we now have in the population,” Darby said.

With so many infected, some may be wondering what does this mean for “herd immunity”-- a term often discussed at the beginning of the pandemic, for when we could be seeing the end of restrictions and safety measures. Though now, the answer is still not clear.

“We don’t know what that number is going to look like, you know, we don’t know if there’s a magical number,” Darby said.

Doctors with UVA Health say the vaccination percentage and immunity percentage has changed throughout the pandemic. Even though we are one step closer, there’s still a ways to go.

“People have heard us talking about 70 to 80% back early in 2020, when COVID was first circulating,” Enfield said. “That number is raised in the 95% or higher with omicron, so we’re probably still a ways away from herd immunity at this time.”

Doctors with both UVA Health and VDH say masking and vaccinations are still important right now, as we wait for the curve to keep going down.

Do you have a story idea? Send us your news tip here.