CHARLOTTE, N.C. — According to the CDC, all of the South Carolina counties still have low COVID-19 community levels, while all of the greater Charlotte area has low COVID-19 community levels, there are five counties in North Carolina that have medium levels.
Despite that, COVID-19 cases are slowly rising in the Carolinas and across the country. Doctors don’t think there will be a surge in cases like at the start of the year. An Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist doctor said the omicron surge is providing protection to so many now with immunity from a previous infection.
But because masks are being removed on public transportation, and contagious subvariants of omicron are spreading, there will be an increase in new cases.
“Cases will go up because not everyone’s masking on the plane and not everyone on the plane is vaccinated and they’ll transmit it between themselves,” Dr. Christopher Ohl with Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist said.
He is not anticipating a major spike but says this change comes as the more contagious BA.2 subvariant of omicron spreads. The latest data shows BA.2 makes up about 78% of cases sequenced in North Carolina. New cases have crept up in the last few weeks and StarMed tweeted its positivity rate is over 10% again.
Despite that, doctors say there is a key reason they’re more optimistic at this stage of the pandemic.
“Locally for us in North Carolina, we have not seen, reassuringly, a significant jump in the number of hospitalized patients yet,” Dr. Cameron Wolfe with Duke Health said.
BA.2 is not causing severe disease that could be a burden on the healthcare system, but doctors say keeping immunity levels up will ensure that trend continues.
Booster shots help with that, but statewide, only half of the vaccinated population got their extra dose.
“There’s no question about the need for the boost now to protect against serious illness and death in the case of omicron infection,” David Montefiori with Duke University said.
There are subvariants of BA.2 starting to spread too. Doctors say each new variant seems to be more contagious than the last.
“At some point, I think the virus is going to reach a tipping point where it’s just not going to be able to acquire any greater improvement in transmissibility," Montefiori said. "When we’ll reach that point is really difficult to say."
Doctors say the severity of future surges really depends on if there’s a new variant that can escape immunity from our current vaccines. But COVID-19 is something that will stick around.
“This is evidence that pre-existing immunity is having a major impact on the pandemic in terms of preventing serious illness and death," Montefiori said. "It can be improved and will be improved if more people will get boosted."
But in the meantime, experts believe we are getting closer to an endemic phase.
“What you’ve seen over the last few months is you’ve seen our response from a public health standpoint return to a much more sort of a hey this is being managed, but like a regular respiratory illness, it’s not derailing our normal day to day activities, we don’t see mass school closures, we’re trying to accommodate the virus, co-exist if you will,” Wolfe said.
Contact Chloe Leshner at cleshner@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.