Mayo Clinic modeling predicts Omicron cases will soon decline

(ABC 6 News) – The Omicron variant is spreading across the country and Mayo Clinic is keeping a close eye on it. Mayo researchers announced that Minnesota is hitting its peak number of COVID cases this week, and we should see a decrease in infections.

Dr. Curtis Storlie with Mayo Clinic has been crunching these numbers.

As of Wednesday, the average daily cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people is 291 in Minnesota. By early February, if the data is correct, average daily cases could drop to 226.

Dr. Storlie says the data looks promising and he believes there will be a sharp decline in infections for a few months. But, he says the virus will evolve, and to keep infections low and to beat the omicron variant, he says get boosted if you haven’t been already.

“We can’t stress this enough, we’re in the driver’s seat here, as long as we want to drive and if the heavy majority of us take boosting seriously, we can make this the last substantial COVID surge,” Dr. Storlie said.

Dr. Storlie says this is not the time to let our guard down, he believes we can beat this pandemic.

“We have the power to turn this thing into the flu, and it’s right now. If we want to go take our booster this becomes less of an annual and more of a bi-annual booster that we need for this. But yes, I believe that if enough of us took this seriously, and we’re talking 70-80% of the population gets boosted twice a year, we could turn this into the flu,” Dr. Storlie said.

Dr. Conor Loftus with Mayo Clinic says the severity of illness is lower with omicron compared to the delta variant and what’s helped with this he says are vaccinations, as fewer people are being hospitalized in the ICU for COVID-19.