HAMPTON ROADS, Va. Spring is in full bloom across Hampton Roads, but COVID-19 cases are withering away.
"We are now on downside of the Omicron peak," said Dr. Brooke Rossheim, Public Health Physician Specialist, Office of Epidemiology with the Virginia Department of Health.
Case counts in Virginia, once at over 10,000 reported per day, are down to now around 900 according to the VDH.
"As of today we have 241 hospitalizations across Virginia and that is an encouraging number," said Julian Walker, spokesperson for the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.
COVID-19 hospitalizations dropping drastically, from what was once 4,000 people a day during the January peak.
"The question at this point, we are seeing a sub variant which is the omicron sub variant is taking over as dominant strain," said Rossheim.
The wild card: the BA-2 subvarian, that could change the course of the spring and summer. UVA modeling predicting that its unclear if BA-2will cause a surge as it did in Europe, but if it does they predict, less of an impact than the Delta surge last fall.
"The coming weeks will show us an increase in number of cases and hospitalizations or the population has been so exposed to omicron BA-2 that it wont have such and impact on us," said Dr. PAtrick Jackson with UVA.
Why the downfall from January until now? These experts say vaccinations, boosters, and herd immunity. 72 percent of Virginian's are vaccinated.
Last summer Hampton Roads saw a spike in cases around the July 4th holiday, and the experts say now is not the time to become complacent
"We can't let and cant let up with vaccinations, this is not the time to say take your foot off case and don’t push vaccinations aggressively," said Dr. Rossheim.
