Estimated 73% of Americans now has immunity against omicron [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• About 73% of Americans are now immune to the Omicron variant, a university health institute says.
• The number could increase to 80% by mid-March.
• The high percentage of immunity from vaccination and previous infection helps in reducing the amount of virus circulating overall.

Roughly 73 percent of Americans are currently immune to the Omicron coronavirus variant, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates. The figure could increase to 80 percent by mid-March, The Associated Press reported.

About half of eligible Americans have received booster shots, and about 80 million confirmed COVID-19 infections have been reported. Many more infections have occurred but haven’t been officially recorded, The Associated Press reported.

The high percentage of immunity from vaccination and previous infection tends to prevent or shorten new illnesses and reduce the amount of virus circulating overall. Health experts are now discussing whether the number is high enough to stop new waves or reduce the burden on hospitals.

“I am optimistic even if we have a surge in summer, cases will go up, but hospitalizations and deaths will not,” Ali Mokdad, PhD, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the AP.

Mokdad works on COVID-19 forecasting for the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been a reliable model during the pandemic. Mokdad calculated the 73% number for the AP.

“We have changed,” he said. “We have been exposed to this virus and we know how to deal with it.”

The U.S. is now reporting about 125,000 new cases per day, according to the data tracker from The New York Times, marking a 68% decrease from the past 2 weeks. Hospitalizations are also down 39%, and about 2,300 new deaths are being reported daily, marking a 13% decline.

There will be more outbreaks as new variants emerge, immunity wanes, and some people remain unvaccinated, Mokdad said. But the coronavirus is no longer new, and the entire population is no longer “immunologically naive.”

By the end of the Omicron surge, about three out of four people in the U.S. will have been infected, Shaun Truelove, PhD, an epidemiologist and disease modeler at Johns Hopkins University, told the AP.

That means different regions and groups of people have different levels of protection and risk. In Virginia, for instance, disease modelers estimate that about 45% of residents have the highest level of immunity by being vaccinated and boosted or vaccinated with a recent Omicron infection. Another 47% have immunity that has waned somewhat.

“That’s going to be a nice shield of armor for our population as a whole,” Bryan Lewis, PhD, an epidemiologist who leads the University of Virginia’s COVID-19 modeling team, told the outlet. “If we do get to very low case rates, we certainly can ease back on some of these restrictions.”

“We’ve reached a much better position for the coming months, but with waning immunity, we shouldn’t take it for granted,” Mokdad said.

Source: Associated Press