NORFOLK, Va. — A forecasting model produced by the Virginia Department of Health and the University of Virginia predicts the state will reach the peak of its omicron variant surge in early February.
“We’re seeing omicron breaking through some of that protection we had in terms of cases, so there are a lot more susceptible people in this omicron scenario," Justin Crow said, Director of VDH's Division of Social Epidemiology.
The UVA model, which can be viewed among VDH's various coronavirus-related dashboards, began including omicron variant projections following a December 15 update, which has since been updated one additional time using data pulled from December 20.
The model breaks down COVID case number scenarios by metropolitan areas in the state. In the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News area, the model projects more than 17,000 cases for the week ending February 13.
Wednesday, the state hit a record high of more than 12,000 new infections.
Crow says the omicron variant's higher transmission rates have outpaced what the model originally anticipated, but reminds people that the projections are still predictions, and are not meant to reflect exact numbers or dates.
“UVA took a conservative approach, they didn’t want to take an extreme approach. But they used a conservative approach, and omicron appears to be moving faster than that.”
VDH included different forecasting scenarios, to see how factors like vaccine rates and winter conditions can impact these projections.