COVID dwindling but still not completely gone, experts say

It’s easy to forget that the world is still in the midst of a pandemic.

The closures of businesses and schools that marked the early days of COVID-19 are long gone, and talk of self-quarantining at home has vanished. The sight of people wearing masks in public has become rare.

Hand sanitizer, cleaning wipes, rubber gloves and toilet paper are back filling the shelves of grocery stores.

For the most part, just over three years since COVID first started popping its disruptive and deadly head up in the United States, people have gone back to living their normal lives.

And COVID data seems to show that things are going pretty well.

In Berks County, for example, this week’s case count reported by the state Department of Health was the lowest it’s been since mid-July 2021.

“We’re in much better shape than we have been,” Dr. Debra Powell, chief of Reading Hospital’s division of infectious disease, said last week.

But that doesn’t mean COVID is completely in the rear-view mirror. People are still getting sick, sometimes severely. And people are still dying.

The pandemic has definitely changed, as has the public response to it. But according to local health experts, there’s still cause to be cautious.

An improving situation

The numbers look good.

Last week Berks saw its lowest reported number of weekly COVID cases in nearly two years. Just 44 people were reported to be infected or reinfected.

The same trend is reflected in the week’s numbers across the state, where only 1,784 new cases or reinfections were reported.

The decrease in cases represents the continuation of a trend. They’ve been dropping significantly for months, taking a nosedive since hitting a holiday-surge peak of 776 in data reported Jan. 4.

Like the case count, hospitalizations and deaths are also down. The state has reported five weekly deaths or less in Berks each week since the start of February, and hospitalizations of COVID patients in the county have been in single digits for five straight weeks.

“The numbers are down,” said Dr. Mohammad Ali, an infectious diseases physician at Penn State Health St. Joseph. “We had a small spring break increase, but now cases are going down. And deaths and hospitalizations are down.

“We’re seeing that in our hospital, in our hospital system. The pandemic is kind of slowing down at the moment.”

Powell said community transmission rates look really good, meaning the virus isn’t spreading as quickly as it has before.

That’s probably because now, more than three years into the pandemic, most people are at least partly protected from it.

“Most people now have had a vaccine or the disease, so they have at least partial immunity,” she said. “So unless we have a really unusual variant show up that we don’t have immunity for, I don’t think we’ll being going back to closing things down.”

Ali said much the same.

“The good news is that since we’ve had this for a few years, we’ve had lots of infections and vaccines,” he said. “We have pretty good background immunity in the population. People have enough protection against severe infection and hospitalization.”

The pandemic situation has improved so much that President Joe Biden this month ended a national COVID emergency declaration. The move — which the president made about a month before the emergency was set to expire — had an impact on local hospitals.

Powell said that because the emergency ended — along with improved local COVID data — the West Reading facility ended its mask mandate. Now patients, staff and visitors no longer need to wear masks inside the hospital.

“It was a very thoughtful decision on masking, we had been watching the numbers closely for the last month,” Powell said. “Honestly, our staff were very excited to be able to see their patients again.

“The day that we took our masks off, people were really excited. It seemed like the end of a stage at that point, that we were getting more back to normal.”

Urging for caution

While it seems clear the pandemic is improving greatly, it doesn’t mean COVID has vanished for good.

Powell and Ali expressed optimism about the current situation but urged caution. They said the virus has been shown to mutate swiftly and can still pose a dire risk to certain segments of the population.

“There is some good new, but there is some caution we should be aware of,” Ali said. “People have forgotten about it, but I don’t think we should because it’s still out there.

“And there are still individuals out there not fully protected. It’s still dangerous for people who are old or have certain health conditions. And there are millions of people on medications that don’t let their immune systems work properly.”

Ali said that, for the most part, people who are young and generally healthy will likely have no or just minor symptoms if they get COVID. At worst, it will be akin to a common cold.

But the elderly and people with serious health conditions, in particular those that impact the immune system, could wind up hospitalized or even dead if they get COVID.

“People at high risk should still be cautious,” he said. “Especially if they’re moving in an environment with lots of people. There’s nothing wrong with them masking appropriately.

“When you’re using a mask and no one else is, you’re kind of the odd person out now. But if you need to wear a mask there’s no harm in doing it.”

Powell said she believes COVID will continue to exist on a low level in the background, similar to something like flu. That means people at risk of having a severe reaction to it should remain cautious.

She also said the virus could still change in a way that could move it back to the forefront.

“This virus will continue to mutate,” she said. “If a variant has any more infectiousness, it may get some traction.”

That was the case with a variant that recently popped up in India, Ali said. That country saw a pretty big spike in cases, however it was not so severe that it stressed India’s health care system.

There is also a variant spreading in southern Australia — a combination of the omicron and delta variants — that caused increased cases there, Ali said.

“They have the potential to spread here and cause a little bit of a spike,” he said.

Tracking the new variants may get more difficult in the weeks and months to come, Ali said. As the public health emergency goes away, he said, there will be less robust tracking of the disease.

“We could be flying a little blind,” he said. “We might not know before something happens. And once you start seeing more hospitalizations it’s too late — there will be lots of pain before we can fix it.”

Vaccinations still key

The rapid creation and distribution of COVID vaccines has played a large part in the battle against the pandemic.

It has helped protect millions against severe infection and was the most important tool for getting lives back to normal. And that’s still the case moving forward, Ali and Powell said.

Both said the focus is now on the newest version of the vaccine, known as a bivalent vaccine. That was introduced in the fall in response to the omicron variant.

If someone has not received that vaccine, Powell and Ali recommended that they do.

“I think it’s a good idea, no matter what age group, to get that as soon as possible,” Ali said. “I think it’s a good idea because it will still give you good protection from infection until fall.”

Powell said data shows less than 14% of people in Berks have gotten the bivalent vaccine.

“It’s kind of low right now,” she said. “I encourage people to get it.”

For those who did get the bivalent vaccine, they might be able to now get a booster.

Powell said it’s recommended that people over 65 years old get a booster four months after they get their first dose. Those who are immunocompromised can get a booster two months after their first dose.

And there might be a new booster that everyone can get this fall. Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are discussing the issue, Ali said.

Powell said she thinks COVID vaccines boosters will become a yearly thing, similar to the flu vaccine.

“That’s what I predict, I think we’ll see this as an annual vaccine,” she said. “I think we’ll have recommendations for both flu and COVID.”

Ali said he also imagines more boosters will be on tap, however he said it doesn’t think they’ll be seasonal like the flu. COVID hasn’t shown to act seasonally, he said.

“If a variant starts somewhere else and gets here it doesn’t matter what season it is,” he said.