By RICHARD SKOLNIK
Los Alamos

Editor’s Note: This is the 11th in a series of COVID-19 Updates by Richard Skolnik that appear bi-weekly in the Los Alamos Daily Post. These are meant to keep the community informed on the status of the pandemic, critical new findings on the pandemic, and what this information suggests for our community’s response to COVID-19. These updates complement the data that Eli Ben-Naim prepares for the Post. Unless otherwise noted, data is from the New York Times and the New Mexico Department of Health.

Pandemic Data and Trends – For the Week Ending Jan. 31, 2022

The table below provides basic data on cases, hospitalizations and deaths for the US, New Mexico, and Los Alamos County for the week ending Jan. 31, 2022.

The figure below shows the 7-day average of new cases over the last six months, ending Jan. 31, for Los Alamos County. The number of new cases in Los Alamos is falling but still substantially higher than at any time prior to our recent surge.

The next figure shows the age distribution of the new cases in Los Alamos over the two weeks ending Jan. 31.

Vaccine Coverage and Impact

CDC data is shown below for the share of each age group that is “fully vaccinated” in Los Alamos County. The definition of “fully vaccinated” does not include boosters. 

In New Mexico, for the four weeks ending Jan. 31, the risk of being infected, hospitalized, and dying was 1.9 times, 5.1 times, and 18.7 times greater if you were “not fully vaccinated” than if you were “fully vaccinated.”

Other Key Pandemic News

January 2022 was the deadliest month for COVID-19 in the US since the pandemic began. More than 880,000 people have now died from this disease. It appears that COVID was the third leading cause of death in the US in 2021.

For the week ending Jan. 27, more than 808,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported. This is down from the peak level of 1,150,000 reported the week ending Jan. 20 but still triple the peak level of the Delta surge in 2021.

Treatments against the virus that causes COVID-19 remain in short supply. In addition, the FDA is rescinding authorization for the Eli Lilly & Co. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. monoclonal antibody treatments in the U.S. because they are not effective against Omicron. 

The FDA has granted full approval to the Moderna vaccine, joining the Pfizer vaccine that was given full approval in August 2021. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is still being used under Emergency Use Authorization.

WHO is tracking four Omicron sublineages, including the Omicron subvariant called BA.2. Studies done in Denmark, where BA.2 already dominates the number of new cases, suggest that this subvariant may be 1.5 times more transmissible than the “original Omicron”. However, studies also suggest that vaccines work just as well against the new variant as against the “original Omicron”. Some epidemiologists believe that the BA.2 subvariant may cause the present surge to stay higher and last longer than would otherwise have been the case.

So, What Should We Do?

The decline in cases is welcome. The lower rates of severe illness and death from Omicron are also welcome. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that:

• We have had more new cases in the week ending Jan. 31 than almost any time since the beginning of the pandemic.
• For many people, COVID-19 is not a benign disease and there remain many uncertainties about possible medium- and long-term effects of even mild or asymptomatic infection.
• Although the pace of patients being hospitalized in New Mexico is declining, our hospitals remain under severe pressure.
• Keeping kids in schools requires that infections be limited both among students, faculty, and staff. We can’t run our schools properly if staff are home sick.
• The new subvariant might slow the decline in the number of new cases.

In light of the above, and despite pandemic fatigue, we need to maintain our mitigation efforts in the community and at schools until we see a longer trend of declining cases and substantially lower levels of new cases. Relaxing mitigation measures now could lead to more new cases, a slower decline in cases, and a cost to the community greater than the cost of a few more weeks of enhanced mitigation.

(Thanks to Eli Ben-Naim for the figures).

Editor’s Note: Richard Skolnik is the former regional director for health for South Asia at the World Bank. He was the director of an AIDS treatment program for Harvard and taught Global Health at the George Washington University and Yale. He is the author of Global Health 101, the instructor for Yale/Coursera’s Essentials of Global Health, and a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. Skolnik has written this article in his personal capacity.