UNC doctor: COVID-19 vaccines should show dramatic results in North Carolina by summer
Vaccines against COVID-19 will largely prevent outbreaks of the disease in North Carolina by this summer, but much work and vigilance will be required until then, doctors at UNC said Wednesday.
Dr. David Weber predicted that 85% of the state’s population will be protected from infection by summer, either because of vaccination or because they have contracted the virus and developed antibodies.
“With the current ability to give everybody vaccines by May, and given the number of people who’ve already been infected, it’s likely we’ll begin to reach community protection levels at the end of May or in June,” Weber, an infectious disease specialist, said at a video press conference.
“This is not a Get Out of Jail Free card,” Weber continued. “If you are susceptible and you’re at risk and you come into direct contact with someone with COVID, you’ll still be able to get COVID. But it will dramatically drive down the rates of new disease.”
Weber said the development of new treatments for COVID-19 and vaccines to target new variants of the virus “give us hope that by the end of the year life will return mostly to normal.”
But Weber and other UNC doctors say it’s too soon to abandon the masks, physical distancing and other measures designed to prevent spread of the airborne virus.
“I think we should be cautiously optimistic,” said Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk, a family physician and professor in the UNC medical school. “Having three vaccines approved that are effective at preventing COVID symptoms, this is very exciting. But at the same time this is not the time to celebrate too much and start relaxing all of the measures that have gotten us this far.”
President Joe Biden said this week that the U.S. should have enough vaccine on hand to inoculate every adult in the country by the end of May. As of Wednesday, nearly 1.5 million people in North Carolina, or about 15% of the population, had received at least a first dose of vaccine, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
As of Wednesday, 865,554 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in North Carolina, nearly one in every 10 residents, according to DHHS. The number of deaths from COVID-19 in the state was 11,363.
The numbers of new cases and people needing hospitalization for COVID-19 have dropped significantly in recent weeks. North Carolina has reported an average of 2,275 new cases a day over the past week, down from the post-holiday peak of more than 10,000 a day in early January.
But the number of new cases and those hospitalized with COVID-19 are still well above where they were during last summer’s surge.
“We seem to be stabilizing countrywide at a level that is where we were at the second surge in June,” Weber said. “So we certainly have trying times ahead of us.”
Dr. David Wohl, another infectious disease specialist at UNC, said the recent decline may have more to do with the spike in cases caused by holiday travel and gatherings.
“We’ve got this artificial mountain of cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths that we’re now seeing the other side of, and I’m hopeful that that will continue,” Wohl said. “But I am worried that we’re seeing a steep decline because we saw a steep increase.”
UNC Health organized the virtual press conference to mark the one-year anniversary of the state’s first confirmed coronavirus case. Since then, UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill has treated more than 1,700 COVID-19 patients while the UNC Health system has conducted more than 250,000 coronavirus tests and administered nearly 200,000 vaccines.
Dr. Wesley Burks, UNC Health’s CEO and dean of the UNC School of Medicine, called Wednesday a “day of reflection.”
“As I think about what things were like a year ago, we weren’t sure what was going to happen,” Burks said. “We certainly didn’t think we’d be here today still talking about it.”
