President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 pandemic over, but many public health officials aren’t ready to say the same.
“We still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over,” President Biden said on the episode of “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday evening.
Dr. Mark Levine, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health, has a nuanced view on the question of whether the pandemic is truly over.
“Most of us in the public health world aren’t willing to say the pandemic is over yet, even if (many Americans) are behaving like it is,” Levine told NECN & NBC10 Boston in an interview Tuesday.
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Levine acknowledged that between easy home testing, vaccines, treatments, returns to work and school, travel resuming, and with many mask mandates dropped, a lot of folks likely have put COVID in the rear view — as the president suggested in his interview with Scott Pelley of CBS News.
However, Levine pointed out the disease still is driving several hundred deaths a day across the country, and tens of thousands of hospitalizations. He added public health leaders are uncertain about whether a possible late-fall or winter COVID surge could happen.
“To say the pandemic is ‘over’ implies a crystal ball look at the future that we don’t really have yet,” Levine said.
At a walk-in vaccine clinic in South Burlington, where hundreds a day are rolling up their sleeves for the next generation of COVID boosters — updated to better protect against the omicron strain of the virus — several said they have specific reasons to stay on guard.
“I spend a lot of time with my mother, so I just want to make sure,” Francis Churchill said of why he sought out the newest booster. “Do whatever you can, right?”
“I’m getting married the first week of October, and we’re going to Italy for our honeymoon, so I wanted to be prepared for that,” said Elizabeth Simak, another recipient of the COVID booster Tuesday. “And hopefully not have COVID interrupt all of that.”
Both Churchill and Simak said they were surprised to hear the president’s statement, but appreciated that work continues to mitigate the disease.
Dr. Levine encouraged Vermonters to get those new Omicron-specific boosters, plus their flu shots this fall.
More information on the COVID vaccine is available through the Vermont Department of Health, including a list of walk-in COVID booster clinics across the state.
