King County Health Officer Jeff Duchin gave an optimistic tone on Friday, predicting that the region could have the worst pandemic behind it in a few months, if not weeks.
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Dr. Duchin cited a number of reasons for his positive outlook, including lower case and hospitalization rates, increased vaccine distribution and an additional Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine that could be approved by the FDA as early as next week.
“We have many reasons to be encouraged as a community,” he said. “Complacency now would be a major mistake, but we are in a much better place today than a month ago and we are moving closer to a possible return to normalcy in a few months.”
“With a few more weeks of serious caution and vigilance, we may be able to reverse the worst COVID-19 pandemic,” he added. “We’re getting close to putting this in the rearview mirror.”
Duchin also claimed that last week marked for the first time during the entire pandemic that King County had not seen a single new COVID-19 case in a long-term unit.
In the coming days, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could prove essential to accelerating the county and state calendar to end the pandemic. The vaccine removed a major obstacle on Friday, after an FDA group unanimously recommended its 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,” said Dr. Duchin. “It has some very attractive features: it is a single dose, very easy to store, it is very effective and has potentially fewer side effects.”
Even so, he also stressed that people should get any vaccine available and that all three are “extremely effective” in preventing the severe symptoms of COVID-19.
“The real advice is if you have a vaccine, get it,” he said. “We can say with great confidence that all these vaccines protect to a very high degree against severe diseases, hospitalization and death.”