Consider This from NPR - The Omicron Wave Is Receding. What Happens Now?

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Cases rates are dropping, but the number of people dying each day is not. Many hospitals are still overwhelmed. NPR's Will Stone reports. Deaths are a lagging indicator — meaning they, too, will soon fall as the omicron wave continues to recede. What does the next phase of the pandemic look like? NPR's Allison Aubrey explains why some public health experts think the coronavirus may not disappear — but become easier to live with. In the meantime, workplaces are still reeling from the surge as employees call out sick or must quarantine. NPR's Andrea Hsu says it's even worse than last winter's pre-vaccine surge. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In many parts of the country, the Omicron wave is beginning to recede. We're moving toward a time when COVID won't disrupt our daily lives. That's White House advisor Jeff Zients sounding optimistic at a recent meeting of the COVID response team. Where COVID won't be a constant crisis, but something we protect against and treat. But while cases are dropping nearly as fast as they rose in cities across the country, many hospitals aren't feeling the relief yet. We're still working just as hard to try to keep people alive with Omicron as we were with Delta.

Dr. Tyson Bell works in critical care at the University of Virginia Hospital. This narrative that it's milder disease from the perspective of a healthcare system, you know, nothing about this has been mild for us at all. While Omicron is milder overall, the sheer number of people infected over the last few weeks has overwhelmed health care workers. And Bell told NPR that three quarters of symptomatic COVID patients in his hospital are not vaccinated. I just kind of know that if they're young or middle age and, you know, don't have a lot of underlying medical problems and they're in the ICU with COVID, you know, they're going to be unvaccinated patients. Hospitals have also been dealing with their own employees getting sick and staying home. And other businesses are feeling that strain too.

Beginning in December, it's just like the floodgates opened and it's sort of been full on since then. John Croft is the chief culture officer for the Maryland-based grocery chain Mom's Organic Market. And he told NPR earlier this month that for a time, they had to let some tasks slide. You know, like collecting carts in the parking lot, bagging groceries for every single customer. Croft says at various points during the Omicron surge, they've had 15 or so employees out for a single store that normally has 50 people showing up to work. We at times just can't get everything done. Consider this. The Omicron surge isn't over, but the worst of it may be behind us.

The question now is what the next phase of the pandemic will look like for public health and the economy. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapcom. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. So how should we think about this next phase of the pandemic? We're going to answer that question with a look at three different indicators, COVID cases, hospitalizations, and the economy. First, cases. The peak nationwide was about two weeks ago with around 800,000 reported cases a day. Now that has fallen by more than 20%. We should point out that COVID deaths are still on the rise. That is typical. Deaths often peak and drop later than overall infections. To help us understand what the

current case rate might tell us about what's next, we're joined by NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey. Hi, Allison. Hi there. Good to be here, Ari. So national declines, same is true in a lot of specific parts of the country. Give us the national picture of what it looks like right now. Sure. I mean, CDC data shows that nationwide the number of new infections is certainly declining. Many areas are past their peaks. Cases in Washington, D.C., New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania have been falling rapidly. Parts of the Midwest, as well as Florida and Texas, are seeing a decline, too. But some areas are still in the thick of it already. So for places that are at or past their peak, how close are we to that time we heard Jeff Zients describe

as a time when COVID won't disrupt our daily lives? Right. None of the infectious disease experts I talk to regularly would say COVID is over. I mean, scientists know the virus is here to stay, but certainly our ability to live with it is getting better, given the extraordinarily high number of people infected amid this surge, combined with the fact that about 80% of people, five and up, are vaccinated with at least one shot in this country, we're a lot more protected. So while our lives may start to feel normalish again soon, the consensus really is that we can't let our guard down just yet. Infections are coming down, but millions more will be infected before this surge really recedes, which models

suggest could be by March. There's also a certain sense of deja vu here. I mean, over the last couple of years, there have been a lot of moments where it seemed like there was a light at the end of the tunnel and then the Delta variant came along or the Omicron variant came along. What are the chances something like that's going to happen again? As long as the virus is replicating, which we know it is across the world right now, it can mutate. There's an Omicron sub-variant circulating in Denmark right now, for example. But infectious disease experts say future outbreaks will hopefully be much more manageable. Vaccine makers keep working on variant-specific shots or ones that could offer kind of broader

protection. Also, more permanent changes may include more seasonal testing for all respiratory viruses, perhaps more focus on keeping workplaces and schools safe with better air circulation, for example, and with proper planning, new treatment options such as the antiviral pills that are in short supply right now should be more readily available, and this should help keep people out of the hospital. NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey. Okay, now let's turn to what's happening at hospitals. The good news is that new hospital admissions are down nearly 9% compared to last week. But that's just one factor. NPR's

Will Stone has been covering the health care system since the start of a pandemic. And Will, what do things look like in American hospitals right now? Well, Ari, hospitals are not in the clear yet at all. Nationally, the total number of COVID patients in the hospital is still higher than it was during any other surge. But it is starting to trend in the right direction. So fewer people are coming into the hospital, and that's largely because of the improvements in places that were hit early, like the Northeast, parts of the Midwest. But some places are on different timelines, and doctors like Kelly Cockett worry people are getting the wrong message. Cockett is at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

That is, I think, what makes it difficult and frankly, sometimes frustrating when we hear in the media, oh, everything's getting better. And people in our state hear, oh, it's clearly downtrending, but our local data doesn't actually reflect that. So there are certainly parts of the country like Nebraska, like states in the West and in the South, where hospitals are as busy as ever. So this is obviously going to vary depending on where in the country people are, but can hospitals start returning to some kind of normal soon? I would say the word normal is not something you'll hear inside most hospitals for a number of reasons. First, hospitals don't just empty out

quickly, especially when they've had record levels of people in the ICU critically ill. Plus, health care workers are going to keep getting infected, which leaves hospitals short staffed. Second, remember that hospitalizations trail infections. So people who got infected the week prior are still coming in as they get sicker and need care. And then finally, this surge has profoundly disrupted health care. And to get a sense of that, take a listen to what Dr. Tammy Ludstrom told me. She's with Trinity Health, which has hospitals all over the U.S. The next couple of weeks, we'll start to see a bit of easing, and then that'll allow us to get in all those people who deferred care.

Some of our facilities have lists of over 200 people that we need to get in for care that was non-urgent, but also is necessary. So that means even as beds open up because there are fewer COVID patients, those are going to get filled up right away with other patients. NPR science reporter Will Stone. Now we're going to look at what's happening with workers and employers in the economy more broadly, which NPR labor and workplace correspondent Andrea Hsu has been reporting on. Andrea, what are you seeing right now? Well, certainly a lot of workers have been calling out sick. The Census

Bureau estimated that earlier this month, it was close to 9 million people who were out because they had COVID or they were caring for someone who had it. Ari, that's three times the number of people who were out for the same reason in early December. And I talked with Joey Price about this. He's the CEO of Jumpstart HR in Baltimore. His clients are small businesses and nonprofits, and he's seeing major staffing challenges everywhere. Clients and even, you know, my local Starbucks. It's resulting in a lot of schedule changes, compressed hours. Because a lot of companies just don't have enough workers. So what are employers doing about that? Well, for example, Starbucks told its store managers, modify operations as needed. Do grab and go or drive through only, whatever it takes.

Businesses everywhere are making do, relying on workers who can show up to do more. In so many ways, this feels like an echo of the uncertainty that businesses felt at the start of the pandemic. The strains on staffing, the uncertainty about the future. Is there any end in sight? Well, in some places, the staffing shortages are easing somewhat. Macy's, you know, had cut back its store hours this month, but it's returning to normal hours next week on February 1st. And schools that went remote,

in part because so many teachers and staff were quarantining, they've now gone back in person. But remember, even before Omicron, it's not as if everything was back to normal, really far from it. Several million people who had left or lost their jobs in the pandemic hadn't gone back to work, and employers are still having a hard time hiring. And now on top of that, there's this havoc created by Omicron. So Joey Price, the HR consultant, told me, if anything, what the surge cemented for a lot of employers is that any carefully laid plan may have to be rethought at a moment's notice. The big thing is employers have stopped expecting.

It's just taking it one day at a time, one week at a time. And I think that's how a lot of people are feeling already two years into this pandemic. NPR Labor and Workplace Correspondent Andrea Hsu. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.