Amid holiday gatherings, Sonoma County health experts warn of possible omicron and delta surge

As the omicron and delta variants of COVID-19 surge across the country, Sonoma County health officials are warning of a similar increase in local virus transmission that could be exacerbated by holiday gatherings.

Officials said it’s unclear to what degree exactly cases are expected to increase, and state forecasting models for expected hospitalizations do not take into account the expected rise in infections resulting from the spread of the omicron mutation.

Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, said a winter surge is certainly coming, but for now no new public health restrictions are expected.

“I don’t see anymore shutdowns coming our way. Things would have to be super, super drastic,” Mase said. “We can certainly expect to an increase in cases with omicron. We detected the first case in Sonoma County last week. The real question will be how bad things get in terms of (severity of illness).”

Kathryn Pack, health program manager for the county’s epidemiology team, said that while more cases due to omicron are expected locally the local impact of such a surge depends on the incremental increase in rates of first and second vaccinations and boosters.

“We are predicting to see a surge, we just don’t know how it will compare to last year,” Pack said.

Mase said the county’s vaccination rate is high compared to other counties in the state and especially compared to some parts of the country. Aside from encouraging local inoculations, Mase said maintaining pandemic-era precautions such as masking and social distancing is crucial to curbing spread of the virus.

On Sunday, the nation’s top federal infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci said mask-wearing on planes may be here to stay. “I think when you're dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step,” Fauci told ABC News’s “This Week.”

Fauci's mask-wearing suggestion came as top government health officials sounded the alarm about the rapidly spreading omicron variant, noting that it already accounts for 50 percent of coronavirus cases in parts of the United States.

Just as many prepare to travel for end-of-year holidays, health officials warned of a tough winter ahead — strengthening calls for the unvaccinated to get their shots and the vaccinated to get boosted.

Fauci said this weekend that all travel presents risks, but vaccinated and boosted people can go ahead with their trips, as long as they're following precautions. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told CBS he wouldn't advocate against travel, “but you should do so very carefully.”

Kaiser Permanente officials said Monday that the delta variant continues to be the dominant strain of the virus circulating in the U.S. and continues to be the cause of most new infections and hospitalizations. Kaiser officials are concerned about the impact to hospitals as both delta and omicron variants are circulating, and omicron is more transmissible than previous coronavirus strains.

“We expect that impact to be felt most after the upcoming holidays, which is why exercising caution is so important when considering holiday gatherings (especially indoors) and travel at this time,” Kaiser said in a statement.

Kaiser added that the “emergence of the omicron” variant does not change what can be done to project one’s health and vaccination continues to provide the best protection against severe illness.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends full vaccination for everyone 5 and older, and booster shots of any vaccine are available to those 18 and older six months after being fully vaccinated.

With the emergence of any new variant, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts immediately seek to determine how it compares to other genetic mutations on three measures: transmissibility, virulence and resistance to vaccines.

Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, said that while transmission rates in the Bay Area are significantly lower than rates those of other parts of the state and country, a significant winter surge is likely.

Citing data compiled by The New York Times, Swartzberg said California, with an average of 20 new daily cases per 100,000 people, is seeing roughly half as much virus transmission as the rest of the United States.

The Bay Area, he said, is seeing about 10 new cases per 100,000 residents and Sonoma County is at about 13 per 100,000, according to New York Times COVID-19 data page. “Right now, we’re doing better than the U.S. as a whole and a whole lot better than New York, where it’s 20 new cases per 100,000,” Swartzberg said.

“But we’re not going to sail through this,” he added. “There’s the possibility between delta and omicron that we could see the number of cases approach what we saw last winter but I think we’ll see fewer less hospitalizations than last winter and less deaths.”

This story includes reporting from The Washington Post. You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.