On Friday, December 17, Public Health – Seattle and King County hosted a press conference with local public health experts including: Jeff Duchin, Health Officer, Public Health – Seattle and King County; Trevor Bedford, Computational Biologist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Santiago Neme, medical director, UW Medical Center – Northwest; and Alex Greninger, associate director, UW Medicine Clinical Virology Laboratory.

The panel warned that the number of Omicron cases in King County is expected to reach levels three times higher than the highest peaks we have seen in the pandemic and increase even further in January.

“If we do a very simple 10-day projection of this growth rate, we should expect about 2,100 daily cases of Omicron in King County on December 22, 2021. This is about 3.5 times the peak of the delta in King County in August,”

Trevor Bedford, computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

They recommended the public take action now to reduce their risk (read more about the advice given at the briefing in our recap blog post).

“The greatest risk from this rapid spread of Omicron is to those who are unvaccinated. The vaccination and boosters will protect many people from serious illness, given our relatively high vaccination coverage rates in King County. But with this rapid increase, we could see a rapid increase in severe cases in unvaccinated people as well as an increase in less severe breakthrough cases.

Dr. Jeff Duchin, Health Officer, Public Health – Seattle and King County

See the full briefing:

Originally published on December 18, 2021