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IT’S IMPORTANT TO ‘CONTINUE TO BE VIGILANT’ The coronavirus will still have some advantages this winter. Cold weather pushes people indoors, where germs, including the one that causes
COVID-19, spread more easily. Some states in the Northeast, even those with high vaccination rates, are already seeing a spike in COVID cases, Troisi pointed out. Add to that the fact that
virus transmission, driven mostly by the extremely contagious delta variant, is still high throughout most of the U.S., which means “there's more chances of you coming in contact with
the virus and being exposed to it,” Madad said. Plus with the holidays on the horizon, more people will take to the rails, roads and skies to visit friends and family, giving the virus even
more opportunities to circulate. “If you're unvaccinated, you should worry,” Madad said, pointing to the relentless delta variant, which sent cases soaring this summer. “The data and
the science are clear: You are at really high risk for getting exposed to the virus and potentially having severe outcomes.” If you’re fully vaccinated, “the sky is not falling down;
you're still well protected,” she added. However, a booster shot, if you are eligible, can add even more protection. So can wearing a mask in indoor public settings. “The bottom line
is, cases are increasing and it's a time to continue to be vigilant,” Madad said. HOW MANY CORONAVIRUS WAVES WILL WE SEE? When will all these COVID crests flatten out for good? That’s
a little harder to predict, the experts say, and the virus has surprised us again and again, most recently with the emergence of the omicron variant. But the pandemic as we know it will
likely shift when we gain more control over the outbreak, said Anthony Fauci, M.D., the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in a recent news briefing. “We don’t know really what that
number is, but we will know it when we get there,” he said. “It certainly is far, far lower than 80,000 new infections per day, and it’s far, far lower than 1,000 deaths per day and tens of
thousands of hospitalizations.” In the meantime, seasonal waves will likely persist, Dowdy said, adding that we could see them for many years, “if not for our lifetimes.” But as we build up
immunity to the virus, COVID will likely get milder over time, he said, which is why getting vaccines into the arms of as many people as possible is so important. “The world may never
look like it did before the pandemic, and we may still be in for a winter surge in cases this year. But from a COVID-19 perspective, there are many reasons to believe that things will be
much better in 2022 than they have been for us these past two years,” Dowdy said. U.S. Surgeon General Warns of an Increase in COVID-19 Cases This Winter