Omicron’s now dominant COVID variant in King County, expected to overtake statewide delta soon

Omicron has officially become the dominant variant of the coronavirus in King County and much of western Washington – and will soon overtake the delta variant in the rest of the state, an officer from Harborview Medical Center said Thursday.

The highly transmissible variant that concerns health officials and scientists nationwide will likely overtake the delta in “days to weeks,” said Dr John Lynch, Harborview’s medical director for infection prevention and control, in a statement. declaration.

“I know it’s tough for everyone,” Lynch said. “As someone who’s been through this, as someone who sees patients with it, as someone who’s been working really hard for two years now to prevent new cases – if that happened to me, I would stay at it. home if my antigen test was positive. “

Despite the rapid spread of omicron, healthy people who are fully vaccinated and given a booster “should mostly expect cold symptoms” if they become ill from the variant, Lynch said.

Yet some Washington state hospitals are already seeing signs that COVID-19-related hospitalizations are “in the middle of a wave” again. But the crash they fear the variant could cause has largely not yet happened, hospital officials said at a press briefing Thursday.

King County recorded an average of 778 daily infections on Thursday, an increase of 169% over the past seven days from the previous week, according to the county’s COVID-19 dashboard. There was also a 2% increase in hospitalizations over the past week, the dashboard reported.

King County saw a single-day increase of 2,879 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, and cases nearly doubled statewide from the previous day with 4,154 new cases reported by the Department of Health on Thursday of State.

Statewide COVID data remains incomplete for the past week, although the seven-day average hospitalization rate has remained fairly constant since early December. The seven-day average infection rate increased slightly between Dec. 4 and Dec. 13, from 112.5 cases per 100,000 people to 116.8 cases per 100,000, according to DOH data.

The statewide epidemiological curve, however, does not quite capture all of the most recent trends for specific areas of Washington, hospital executives said Thursday.

South King and Pierce counties, for example, currently stand out for their recent surge in hospitalizations for COVID, said Mark Taylor, RN and director of operations at the Washington Medical Coordinating Center – a center located at Harborview Medical Center that balances the placement of COVID patients requiring acute hospital care throughout the region.

Part of the recent increase in this country could be attributed to the delta surge or the outcome of Thanksgiving meetings, Taylor said.

He added, however, that the increase “could certainly be the start of the impact of the new variant.”

The first reports show the disease caused by omicron could be softer than the delta variant, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, at the University of Washington, this week predicts the infection-hospitalization rate for omicron is said to be 90-96% lower than for the delta variant.

The institute also predicted that over the next two months, 60% of the US population will be “likely infected with omicron” – meaning the number of infections could yet overwhelm already overcrowded hospitals, Taya Briley , executive vice president of the Washington State Hospital Association, said Thursday.

The state hospital association and health worker unions have been warning the public for months of long-term staffing and capacity issues. Briley echoed the same concerns Thursday in a plea to keep the public smart this winter. She also reminded residents that since the omicron variant is highly transmissible, hospital officials are concerned about how it could affect staff.

“Even if staff don’t get very sick from omicron, it will still affect their ability to get to work as they have to self-isolate,” Briley said.

In addition to wearing high-quality, well-fitting face masks, getting vaccinated and walking away, Briley also encouraged people to “seek appropriate care when they need it.”

“We continue to see people wait for an emergency to seek treatment,” she said, advising people to quickly contact primary care doctors and nurse helplines.

The main pressure on the state’s healthcare continues to be patients who do not need acute care but are stuck in hospitals due to a shortage of staff in long-term care facilities. .

Unless these patients can be immediately moved to non-hospital settings, Briley said providers are unsure whether they can provide care to all who need it during a surge in COVID hospitalizations.

“Over the past few months, we have shared our ability to successfully manage COVID-19 peaks and care for all who need it,” she said. “We feel it differently today. “