Osterholm on COVID: ‘We Won’t See Big National Surges — But We’re Not Done with This Virus at All’

Friday on “CNN Newsroom,” director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and former adviser to President Biden’s transition team Dr. Michael Osterholm cautioned that “we’re not done” with the coronavirus at all.

Osterholm said with the vaccine programs in place that high-income countries “won’t see big national surges,” but still stressed the importance of getting everyone vaccinated to prevent small surges.

“[L]et’s make it very clear that in the high-income countries like the United States that have had the kind of vaccine programs that have been in place, we won’t see big national surges, not like we did last January,” Osterholm advised. “But we’re not done with this virus at all. You know, we have over a hundred counties in this country that have had less than 20% of their population vaccinated. We have states where we’re well below 40% with even a single dose of vaccine in people. So we have a lot of susceptible people out there that have been not vaccinated, that, for example, should this Delta variant take over, we’ll see local and regional surges that are substantial. We’re already seeing that in Missouri, we’re seeing that in other southern states where we are beginning to see this emerging surge in a given county.”

“I think this is all the more reason we have to know that we’re not done with the virus yet,” he continued. “We’re surely further along in this country than other places, but we still need to get people vaccinated. And as you know, things have slowed down dramatically in terms of new people getting vaccinated.”

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