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Virginia’s already seeing significant numbers of people with the new BA.2 subvariant of COVID-19 — the one that this month led China to impose lockdowns affecting more than 50 million people — but health officials say the state’s unlikely to see a repeat of January’s omicron tsunami.
Lab results show about 20% of cases now are infections of the BA.2 subvariant, said Julie Murphy, a member of the Virginia Department of Health’s COVID-19 Response Team.
While that suggests case counts are likely to rise, with BA.2 becoming the dominant variety, “our current modeling suggests the rise will be blunted,” she said.
And the squeeze on hospital beds should not be as worrisome as the January omicron wave.
That’s pretty much in line with what Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he is expecting.
Looking at case counts and hospitalizations in Great Britain, Fauci told Bloomberg News the factors driving that nation’s spike are the highly contagious nature of the BA.2 subvariant, the easing of social distancing restrictions and waning protection from vaccines.
“We have all three of those factors right now in this country,” Fauci said.
“I would predict that we are going to see a bit of an increase, or at least a flattening out and plateauing of the diminution of cases. And the question is how do we deal with that?”
Fauci said U.S. case counts tend to follow British trends by a few weeks.
Looking ahead, Murphy said Virginia’s relatively high rate of vaccination, and signs that people who had the omicron variety have some natural immunity to the new subvariant, should help. And early signs are that BA.2 infections are relatively mild, compared with other COVID-19 varieties, she said.
Hampton Roads generally and much of the state have high levels of vaccination and low case counts, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data show. In Hampton Roads, vaccination rates range from a low of 50% in Portsmouth to a high of 71% in Norfolk.
The nearest locality with a low vaccination rate, Sussex County at 35%, also has a low case count. The only place in Virginia with a low rate of vaccination and a high case count is Pittsylvania County, in the Old Belt tobacco region on the North Carolina state line.
VDH monitors data on case counts, the severity of cases and hospital capacity. After the waves of COVID-19 infections hit the state in 2020 and 2021, public health officials and Virginia hospitals have learned a lot about rapidly scaling up and easing off public health measures, such as mask mandates, testing and vaccination outreach, she said.
“Fortunately, cases continue to remain low at our hospitals. It is not anticipated that this subvariant will result in a surge of hospitalizations even though it is more transmissible than the earlier omicron variant and will soon become the dominant variant,” said Dr. Joel Bundy, vice president and chief quality and safety officer at Sentara Healthcare.
“Although we may see an increase in cases, immunity in the general population from vaccination and previous infections will limit a dramatic surge.”
In Virginia, the seven-day rolling average of new cases is running at just under 800, though the latest day-to-day reports are starting to trend higher. Even so, that’s well down from the mid-January peak of nearly 19,000, as the omicron wave swept the state.
The number of infected Virginians needing hospital care — especially intensive care — is also down sharply. Hospitalized patient numbers are one-tenth the mid-January level, with a rolling seven-day average of just under 400.
The number of COVID-19 patients in ICUs is down to just 100 from more than 650 at the omicron peak.
Hospital case counts are even lower in Hampton Roads: there were just 44 cases of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection in area hospitals on Friday, down from more than 1,000 in mid-January, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. There are 15 cases in area ICUs, down from more than 160 in mid-January.
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The trend with severe cases requiring hospitalization, and with the most severe cases that need intensive care is a major public health concern — hospitals moved to postpone elective care during the omicron peak, in order to make sure there were beds available for urgent cases, including the spike in COVID-19 cases.
In terms of available beds, Virginia’s doing a bit better than the nation generally, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data show: in Virginia, 26% of hospital beds are available for patients, compared to a national average of 24%; 32% of ICU beds are available compared to 27% nationwide.
As cases rise, Murphy said Virginians should watch for local health district guidelines on masking, testing and quarantines.
Generally in the United States, the degree of restriction varies from community to community based on local transmission and hospitalization rates — the Chinese lockdowns, which include an entire province and several large cities, reflect that nation’s “zero-COVID” public health approach, public health officials say.
Last week, the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry’s Worker Safety Board removed the state’s first-in-the-nation permanent workplace safety rules, implemented by then-Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration, which declared COVID-19 a work hazard and directed businesses to require masking and make sure employees and customers were social distancing.
The General Assembly last month enacted legislation allowing parents to opt-out of school mask mandates.
Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com