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Cases are expected to continue to grow exponentially. At one point last week, the test positivity rate was 24%. On January 6, Oregon Health Authority reported only 7% of adult ICU beds (42 beds) were available in the state. As state epidemiologist Dr. Dean Sidelinger said Friday. “This is not the way any of us wanted to begin the new year.”
You might be experiencing this wave personally, or hearing stories of exposure, quarantine, infection, and isolation from within your social networks. You might have been one of the many people trying to find a booster shot, a rapid test kit, a PCR testing appointment. (Just last week, after a suspected exposure, I myself was.)
Before we go on, let’s acknowledge that not all the news is bad, this is 2022, not 2020. We have much to be grateful for:
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We have highly effective vaccines. Though they don’t prevent infections as well with omicron, they continue to provide strong protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
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We have treatments.
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We have reason to believe Omicron leads to fewer hospitalizations and deaths than Delta.
However, while individual risk may be low, the communal risk is high. We are still in a pandemic (pandemics are defined by rapid spread). Even if Omicron leads to a lower percentage of hospitalizations, this can still be an extremely high number, as the number of infected people is much higher. The latest OHSU forecast suggests that we might reach peak hospitalization on January 27 with 1652 patients (this would be 40% higher than the peak during the Delta wave in September).
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