King County Health Chief Dr. Jeff Duchin on Friday took an optimistic tone and predicted the region could suffer the worst of the pandemic in a matter of months, if not weeks.
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Dr. Duchin cited several reasons for his positive outlook, such as falling case and hospitalization rates, increased vaccine distribution and an additional single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine that could be approved by the FDA as well. start soon next week. .
“We have a lot of reasons to cheer ourselves up as a community,” he said. “Complacency would now be a major mistake, but today we are in a much better place than a month ago and we are nearing a possible return to normalcy in a few months.”
“With a few more weeks of serious caution and vigilance, we may be able to leave behind the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added. “We’re about to put it in the rearview mirror.”
Duchin also claimed the fact that last week was the first time throughout the entire pandemic that King County saw no new COVID-19 cases in a long-term facility.
In the coming days, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine could prove crucial to speeding up the county and state calendar to end the pandemic. This vaccine ended up with a major hurdle on Friday, after an FDA group unanimously recommended it for emergency use.
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The vaccine also has significant advantages over those manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna.
“This is a very good vaccine,” Dr. Duchin said. “It has some very attractive features: it’s a single dose, very easy to store, it’s very effective and potentially has fewer side effects.”
However, he also stressed that people should take any available vaccine and that all three are “highly effective” in preventing severe symptoms of COVID-19.
“The real advice is that if you have a vaccine available, take it,” he advised. “We can say with great confidence that all of these vaccines protect to a high degree against serious illness, hospitalization and death.”