Doctors at Aspirus are once again encouraging those vaccinated against COVID-19 to get a booster, especially given the unknowns around the Omicron variant of the disease.
“The vaccines are important because they stop or limit the spread of the virus. In doing so, they decrease the overall virus in the community. When that happens there’s less opportunity for the virus to mutate”, said Senior System Physician Dr Michael Walter.
He says that's especially important because each mutation creates more unknowns.
“What we know about it (the Omicron variant) so far is that it may cause less severe illness, but may be more easily transmissible. However, this data is really preliminary”.
Dr. Walters says it remains to be seen just how bad this variant will get.
“I would say that the research so far is not full. There may be more research that comes out that will eventually prove that it may be more infections or less transmissible. We just don’t know yet.”
Dr. Walters says by getting vaccinated you can help cut down on transmissions, and help stop future mutations.
“The other thing is, if we continue to have variants, we will have to continue to develop vaccines and boosters to address those new variants, if the previous ones weren’t already effective.”
Wisconsin is seeing a sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in recent weeks- with nearly 4 thousand new cases reported on Thursday alone.
