Health officials have been reporting that the average daily number of new COVID-19 cases is rising in the United States.
However, some experts say that the focus should shift to COVID-19 hospitalizations as the primary indicators of the pandemic’s status, especially in light on the new Omicron variant.
They say that this is because almost all new cases among vaccinated people don’t develop into serious illnesses, so counting cases has become less impor-tant.
As the world enters its third year with the COVID-19 pandemic and the more than 5 million deaths that it’s caused, a growing number of experts say that the disease is here to stay, and it’s time we start looking at the novel coronavirus in a new light.
Specifically, they say that it’s time to measure the pandemic’s impact by shifting how we look at the statistics, especially with the Omicron variant rap-idly advancing all over the world.
Even before the Omicron variant emerged last month, experts said that vaccinated people could still get COVID-19, but their risk of being hospitalized or dying is much lower than that of an unvaccinated person.
So, instead of looking at the case numbers, experts say that it’s time to focus on the severity of the pan-demic through the number of hospitalizations.
This is especially true as early research shows that Omi-cron, while probably more transmissible than other variants, is likely less severe when it comes to symptoms.
“It’s always been the way we should have been looking at it,” Dr.William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt Uni-versity in Tennessee, told Healthline.
“Hospitaliza-tions and deaths are much better documenters than new cases.“Both measures, case rate and hospitali-zations, continue to be important,” Schaffner con-tinued.
“Omicron clearly is more transmissible than Delta.In order to measure its rapid spread, case rates will be up front.“We’re not entirely sure how virulent Omicron is.
Most cases have been mild, occurring in vaccinated people.What will it do among an unvaccinated population, such as my state’s rural areas?“It will take a bit of time for Omicron to get into such places.
Once there, the hospitalization rate will once again become an important factor,” he explained.“If Omicron is both highly contagious and generally mild, then we in the U.S.
will be able to move from acute pandemic into more chronic, endemic COVID,” Schaffner predicted.
“However, the pandemic still will be active over much of the world.All the variants of concern have originated in other countries, so new virulent vari-ants could arise and be imported here, once again.
This comprehensive global view is necessary.“Never underestimate the abilty of COVID to throw a wicked curveball,” he noted.
Schaffner added that testing capacity has been limited throughout the pandemic, which can cause an undercounting of COVID-19 cases.
So can false negatives, especially for at-home rapid tests.Dr.Monica Gandhi is an infectious disease expert and a professor of medi-cine at the University of California, San Francisco.
