MILWAUKEE – Dr. John Raymond, President and CEO at the Medical College of Wisconsin, says the Omicron variant of COVID-19 “may be one of the most highly contagious viruses we’ve ever dealt with.”
Dr. Raymond made the comments during the Health and Economy Briefing on Wisconsin’s Afternoon News.
“I think that’s why you’ve seen in just a two week period of time, we’ve gone from less than one percent of the cases in the U.S. being Omicron to now 73 percent,” he said. “So it’s now overtaking Delta as the prominent strain here.”
Dr. Raymond says the health community is “hoping” that infections from Omicron are not as severe as infections from Delta.
“Because we really don’t have a lot of space left in our hospitals to be able to deal with another massive surge on top of the Delta surge that we’re dealing with right now.”
“We actually don’t know if it’s less-severe than Delta, and we probably won’t know for at least the next couple of weeks.”
You can listen to the entire interview with Dr. John Raymond in the media player at the top of this article.
