Dr. Rai discusses local COVID situation, omicron variant - WBAY

Rai joined us on Action 2 News This Morning to discuss what he’s learned about the new omicron variant and why it’s too early to say if it will be a milder infection than delta.

Obviously a lot of news on hospitalizations throughout the state, actually, just hospitals are seeing a lot of COVID and seeing other illnesses, so there’s a combination of that going on right now.

“I think it’s once again important to understand we’re very early in this, which gives us time to prepare?

Really, it’s the same three buckets we talk about with every variant to remind everybody, is this variant, is it more transmissible.

Well, I think some scientists early on have said that the vaccines that we have are going to provide some level of protection, especially against severe disease, going into the hospital.

That’s really early.

So I think it’s a little early now to say this variant causes a milder illness.

“Rightfully so, we focus on people on die, unfortunately, and so many people have, but we forgot so many other people have gotten sick, did not die, but got long COVID symptoms.

There’s so many long COVID symptoms and we don’t talk enough about it.

It was interesting over the weekend in that same presentation, they pointed out that people who got vaccinated had less of a chance of getting long COVID.

Or even getting vaccinated after you got infected, the earlier you got it, the chances of getting long COVID were less.

One of the other things we can do to prepare ourselves, whether it’s omicron, delta or whatever, is to start taking better care of our health