Thread by @PeterHotez

Many thanks ⁦@Boris_Sanchez⁩ for hosting me today as I discuss the situation in NY NJ DC where hospitalizations are now going up and healthcare and other essential workers are experiencing breakthrough covid and therefore being knocked out of the workforce

My concern is that this could become a difficult situation since in 2020-21 we’ve seen how mortality rates go up when hospitals become overwhelmed. So my suggestions are as follows…

1. Take the rise in hospitalizations seriously, the US is different from UK in a number of ways and we shouldn’t just assume omicron won’t produce severe illness. We just had our first omicron death in Houston, for instance, someone with previous infection

2. It’s all hands on deck keeping our HCWs in the healthcare workforce. I support CDC decision to revise isolation guidelines. When asked why we don’t do this for everyone, I said I don’t have the “inside baseball” (my new fav expression think I got it from Stephen Hahn) on that

3. I’m also a big proponent of offering 2nd boosters to HCWs if they are >2-3 months out from their 1st Pfizer booster. This is because of declining protection vs omicron and the urgency to keep HCWs on the job. This approach was recently adopted in Israel, but pushback here

Here’s my argument in full from @latimes last weekend latimes.com/opinion/story/…

Part of the problem in making these decisions there isn’t much time, omicron came up really fast. Also factoring into my thinking: 1) 2 of 3 mabs don’t work with omicron, 2) we won’t have Paxlovid in time, 3) diagnostic testing is a mess, let’s maximize use of the tools we have