The highly infectious Omicron variant is moving at an astonishing speed, according to the latest projections. We project the number of King County cases by next week to be three-times higher than the highest peak we've seen previously in the pandemic. We expect case numbers to continue to rise in January.
A similar pattern is expected to emerge in other parts of the United States.
The severity of Omicron cases is not clear at this time. Most fully vaccinated people should be protected from severe infection, but we expect to see many more serious cases in unvaccinated people, as well as many milder breakthrough infections among the vaccinated.
The rapid rise in cases has the potential to be more disruptive than previous waves, endangering the health care system's ability to care for people, as well as being a major disruptor to businesses, schools and key infrastructure, as employees become ill.
King County residents and workplaces are urged to take steps now to reduce the risk to themselves, their families, and others in order to lower the impact of the expected surge on the health care system and the community.
The latest projections are based on the rapid rate of spread of the Omicron variant in other countries, along with the latest local sequencing data.
"If we do a very simple 10-day projection of this rate of growth, we should expect 2,100 daily Omicron cases in King County on December 22, 2021. This is approximately 3 times the number of cases seen at the highest point in the pandemic for King County (December 2020)," said Trevor Bedford, computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.