By GARY A. WARNER/Oregon Capital Bureau
Oregon has passed the crest of the ultra-contagious omicron wave of COVID-19, but still faces a dangerous time before levels drop back to where they were in June, state health officials said Thursday.
“The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has peaked and will steadily recede until reaching pre-omicron levels by the end of March,” according to the forecast by Oregon Health & Science University. But the fifth and most widely-spread of the waves of virus that have hit Oregon in the past two years is not over.
“It’s important for people to stick with masking through the next several weeks,” said Peter Graven, director of the OHSU Office of Advanced Analytics.
The trend is backed up by the averaging of 13 major medical, university and scientific forecast models submitted regularly to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hitting the peak and starting down does not mean the wave is over. Each day will roughly match up with a similar point on the curve, with new infections, severe illness and death.
Graven’s forecast shows Oregon is on track to pass the key number of 400 hospitalizations per day. Gov. Kate Brown has said she will end the indoor mask requirements when the state has fewer than 400 patients with COVID-19 in Oregon hospitals, or March 31, whichever comes sooner. OHSU forecasts that the hospitalizations mark will be reached March 30.
In a briefing with state lawmakers, Graven said he was seeing sustained trends that omicron is very high, but receding.
“I believe we are at the peak and we are kind of bouncing around a little bit as it comes down,” he said.
Hospitalizations are the most accurate measure of the impact and direction of a virus surge. Graven’s report showed the state would be under 1,000 hospitalizations a day by Feb. 18. It is expects cases to drop under 500 around March 23. The count will go under 200 by April 23. By the second week of May, hospitalizations should fall below 100.
Oregon has fared relatively well so far in the omicron surge with lower than projected illness and deaths. Estimates of severe cases of COVID-19 in OHSU reports near the beginning of 2022 showed up to 3,000 people could be hospitalized in Oregon on peak days in the wave.
“In the current surge, a lot more states went up much much higher than us and more steeply,” Graven said.
OHSU projected 80% of the state population followed the indoor mask mandate during recent weeks. That’s a level similar to mask wearing in the northeastern states first hit by omicron. Oregon had its guard up two weeks prior to the wave moving across the nation to the West Coast.
With masking and a relatively high level of vaccination, Oregon was dealt a less powerful blow than other states where the safeguards were ignored or actively opposed. The hospitals have filled up during the omicron wave with mostly unvaccinated people either suffering from severe cases of the virus, or hospitalized for other reasons — surgery, accidents, heart attacks — but blood tests showed they were positive for COVID-19.
The omicron wave was far less damaging for those who were vaccinated, and especially had the booster shot, Graven said.
“Once you get boosted, you pretty much get removed from the possibility of getting hospitalized for much,” Graven said. While he wouldn’t want to say the booster ensured absolutely no chance of illness or death, “from a probability perspective it is.”
The overall result in Oregon has been a lower peak but a flatter curve that spread new cases over a longer period of time.
Pattern of “fear and fatigue”
Graven said the typical wave behavior pattern of “fear and fatigue” was again showing up, with residents taking strong action as the virus numbers mounted, but now tiring of the effort and being quicker to spend time indoors with others, going to restaurants and indoor events.
“That is kind of a true metric of fatigue,” Graven said. “People getting through a surge and trying to get back to normal.”
The omicron variant spread wider and faster than any wave during the two years of the world pandemic. While less lethal for most people in individual cases, the tidal wave of cases is following the same pattern of infection, severe cases and deaths rising in order, then declining in the same way.
“Unfortunately, there will be more deaths,” Graven said.
The forecast released Thursday shows the average number of deaths rising from about 13 per day now to a peak of 18 in early March. It will then follow the same path as infections and severe cases with a relatively steep decline. Deaths are projected under five per day by the end of March.
Graven said that barring a new, virulent variant, COVID-19 could move into an endemic phase much like other viruses.
The forecast came after the Oregon Health Authority daily report was a roll-call of mostly encouraging numbers. OHA reported 28,378 new cases of COVID-19 during the week ending Feb. 6, down 35% from the prior week. The percentage of tests that are positive for COVID-19 has fallen to 12.9%. A week ago it was 22.9%
While infections were off sharply and hospitalizations were declining, the last indicator to move in most pandemic waves is deaths. OHA reported 57 new COVID-19-related deaths Thursday, bringing the total for the pandemic to 6,322.
- The Oregon Capital Bureau in Salem is staffed by reporters from EO Media and Pamplin Media Group and provides state government and political news to their newspapers and media around Oregon, including YachatsNews.com