Omicron Ebbing Gives Time to Boost Vaccinations

Short Wave

NPR

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🗓️ 1 February 2022

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

As COVID-19 cases in the U.S. drop, the hospitalization rate remains high — as does the death rate. Experts say getting a COVID vaccine booster is key to maintaining immunity, but only about half of all vaccinated people in the U.S. have gotten the booster, which increases protection against both serious illness and death from the Omicron variant. Still, many infectious disease experts are cautiously optimistic for the coming months, pointing to it as a time to bolster our defenses against the virus.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:04.6	Hey short waivers, Emily Quank here with NPR Health Correspondent, Allison Ophry.
0:10.2	Hi Emily, it's good to be here.
0:12.2	So let's do a COVID checkup.
0:14.0	Omicron, that variant is losing steam even though it's got a sub variant we'll talk about
0:19.6	in a bit.
0:20.8	New cases of the coronavirus are falling, but hospitalizations are near all time highs.
0:27.4	It's part of the awful kind of predictable pattern of every surge of this pandemic,
0:32.6	deaths, lag of peak in infections.
0:35.0	Yeah.
0:36.0	It's a hard reality to swallow even if it is a pattern that we've come to predict.
0:41.0	But despite this, a lot of infectious disease experts are telling me they're cautiously
0:45.1	optimistic about the months ahead.
0:47.4	So today on the show, we're going to talk about what cases look like around the country
0:51.0	and how some doctors are thinking about what's to come.
0:55.2	Possibly a better spring.
0:57.0	I hope so.
0:58.0	You're listening to shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.
1:16.7	So Allison, let's do a COVID checkup on the US.
1:20.5	The number of COVID cases is declining rapidly in some states.
1:25.2	If you look at the US as a whole, what do you see?
1:28.4	I see that new infections have fallen more than 30% since mid-January.
	...

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