Health expert: Soaring COVID-19 cases should no longer be a “major measure” of the pandemic

A leading health expert has said that the much milder symptoms reported by people vaccinated against the coronavirus prove that inoculation is the best way to protect yourself from being seriously ill or dying from the disease and that an increase in the number of cases should no longer be the central metric to measure the pandemic.

“For two years, infections always preceded hospitalizations before death, so you can watch the infections and know what was to come,” said Ashish K. Jha, Dean of Brown University and former health expert. of Harvard during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. “Omicron is changing that. It is the change we expected in many ways.”

The country has moved, Jha said, to a place where people who have been vaccinated and especially those who have received a booster “will bounce back” if they are infected with the coronavirus.

“It’s very different from what we’ve seen in the past,” he said. “So I don’t think infections, in general, should be the primary measure anymore. ”

“For two years, infections have always resulted in hospitalizations that have resulted in death… Omicron is changing that. This is the change we expected in many ways. “@ashishkjha recount @jonkarl the number of new cases should no longer be a major pandemic measure. https://t.co/J7RmT8QvS9 pic.twitter.com/XETOWOnzif

– This week (@ThisWeekABC) December 26, 2021

Cases in the United States and around the world have reached record levels not seen since the start of the pandemic, and the omicron variant now accounts for a large portion of infections, including breakthroughs among fully vaccinated and boosted people.

Jha said it remains important for health officials to track infections among unvaccinated people “because those people will end up in the hospital.”

“But we really need to focus on hospitalizations and deaths now,” he said.

Also on Sunday, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said he was optimistic the country is now in a better position to beat the pandemic than it did at the start of the epidemic, citing improved testing and vaccine capacities.