Beyond omicron: What will COVID-19 be like in 2022? Next few months may be critical
Seven hundred days. That’s about how long it’s been since COVID-19’s first deadly surge in March 2020.
And the next few months will be the most uncertain of the pandemic, one expert says. After more than 6.1 million cases in the state since early 2020, and at least 80,000 deaths, we could find ourselves approaching some sort of herd immunity. But all it takes is another, more virulent variant or stealthy subvariant of the coronavirus to make things worse.
Are we past the peak of omicron?
There are promising signs that omicron is waning in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It’s taking a little longer because Texas is one to two weeks behind national COVID trends.
In the last couple of weeks, DFW has seen 6 percent fewer infections. The University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium says North Texas is just past the late January peak in cases and hospital admissions. Peak deaths will follow in the coming weeks.
Because we’re past the peak, the consortium expects that we’ll see a decline in cases and hospital admissions throughout February.
“Within about a month and a half to two months, we’ll be kind of through the worst of it,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “Even though we are past the peak, there’s still significant infections, and hospital admissions that will happen on the back end.”
When will the U.S. see herd immunity?
“The next six months are the most uncertain since the start of a pandemic,” Fox said. “We might be at a sort of transient herd immunity. And the question is, how long will that last?”
We don’t know how long-lasting herd immunity — through vaccination or prior infection — will be. Current research suggests that immunity wanes about every six months, after which a person can get reinfected.
“We would hope that the level of immunity across Texas is increasing, and that will afford us some protection,” said Dr. Jennifer Shuford, the chief state epidemiologist.
Experts say it’s likely new COVID variants will emerge after omicron. If those variants evade immunity, we could have another pandemic surge.
“We almost certainly are going to see future variants of the virus. It’s much less clear: When is that going to occur? And what will be the specific characteristics and behavior of those variants?” said Dr. James Cutrell, an infectious disease doctor at UT Southwestern Medical Center. “Will it be more contagious, or be associated with more severe or moderate disease?”
How will we deal with it?
The UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium called for expanded rapid testing to manage future surges, in an analysis published in January in the Lancet Regional Health — Americas.
“Rapid testing has been one of the most underutilized, preventative measures in the U.S.,” Fox said.
Vaccination also remains integral to building immunity and protecting against new variants, Cutrell said.
New treatments are in the pipeline to treat COVID early and prevent hospitalization. UT Southwestern researchers are testing polyclonal antibodies, a cocktail of multiple antibodies that targets different parts of the virus and could be effective against multiple variants.
Other treatments are being developed to help patients fight more aggressive variants. Texas A&M researchers are studying a drug compound called MPI8 that they say can stop the virus from replicating in lab tests.
More COVID pills are also in the works. Antiviral drug remdesivir, which you can only get at the hospital through an IV, is being made into a pill that you can take without a hospital visit.
How will the pandemic end?
If the U.S. achieves herd immunity, COVID could become endemic, meaning the disease is relatively stable with seasonal surges. This coronavirus would be one of the respiratory viruses like the flu that circulate year to year.
“(Pandemics) end in one of two ways: Either the virus disappears, which is probably unlikely to happen in this case. Or we decide as a society to live with it, and I think that’s what we’re headed towards,” said Dr. Catherine Troisi, infectious disease epidemiologist with UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston.
To reach the endemic phase, about 95% of people will have to achieve immunity either through vaccination or through infection, Troisi said.
“We’re hoping that by a lot of our population having antibodies against COVID-19, that it can prevent some of these really huge surges and the really big strains that they cause on our hospital system, but it probably won’t be enough to totally eliminate COVID-19,” Shuford said.
Dr. Fred Campbell, associate professor and internal medicine physician at UT Health San Antonio, predicts that we could reach the endemic phase by the summer.
If the virus continues to mutate after becoming endemic, however, we may need shots every year to fight those mutations.
This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
