Dr. King County health officer Jeff Duchin hit an optimistic tone on Friday, predicting that the region could be behind its worst pandemic within months, if not weeks.
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Dr. Duchin cited a number of reasons for his positive outlook, including declining cases and hospitalizations, an increase in vaccine distribution, and a supplemental single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine that could be approved by the FDA as early as next week. .
“We have many reasons to be encouraged as a community,” he said. “Complacency would be a big mistake now, but we are in a much better place today than we were a month ago, and we are on the path to a possible return to the norm in a few months.”
“With a few more weeks of serious caution and vigilance, we can put the worst COVID-19 pandemic behind us,” he added. “We’re almost there to put this in the rearview mirror.”
Duchin also praised the fact that last week was the first time in the course of the entire pandemic that King County didn’t see a single new COVID-19 case in a long-term facility.
In the coming days, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could prove to be integral to accelerating the county and the state’s timeline to end the pandemic. That vaccine took up a major hurdle on Friday, after an FDA panel unanimously recommended it for emergency use.
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The vaccine also has significant advantages over Pfizer and Moderna.
“This is a very good vaccine,” said Dr. Duchin. “It has some very attractive properties: it is a single dose, very easy to store, it is very effective and may have fewer side effects.”
Still, he also stressed that people should take any vaccine available, and that all three are “very effective” at preventing severe COVID-19 symptoms.
“The real advice is if there’s a vaccine available to you, take it,” he advised. “We can say with great confidence that all of these vaccines have a very high degree of protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death.”