The omicron variant of COVID-19 has become the dominant strain in most states.

Although omicron doesn’t appear to be as severe as the original strain of the virus, the number of people infected with it has gone to heights not seen since last winter.

According to the state Department of Health Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard, the highest percent of positive cases in Pennsylvania for the week of Dec. 24 to 30 was in Monroe County at 32%.

The county with the highest incidence rate of COVID in the state per 100,000 people was Northampton. Lehigh County was the second, followed by Monroe in fourth place and Carbon in sixth.

Dr. Luther Rhodes, an infection specialist with Lehigh Valley Health Network, said that current vaccines, especially when boosted, give adequate protection against omicron.

“They are, in some sense, all the same,” he said about the variants. “They’re respiratory viruses spread the same way, inhaling a virus. They are also prevented the same way and that’s primary vaccine and then a booster.”

The area where the type of variant is making a difference is in the treatment of patients with monoclonal antibodies, Rhodes said.

The medical community has been using one particular type of monoclonal antibody over the other two approved for emergency authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, because it had the best results for patients with the delta variant.

That treatment hasn’t worked as well for patients with the omicron variant.

Whether it is delta or omicron, Rhodes said the most important thing people can do is get vaccinated.

“Vaccines are safe and effective,” he said.

Rhodes said the medical community is trying to stay ahead of the variants with their treatments, but it’s difficult.

“If we could get a sufficient percentage of the population vaccinated so that it’s not widespread, then that would be the best protection,” he said.

The people who spread the most COVID are asymptomatic, because they don’t know they have it and are out among the general population.

“You don’t have to be sick to have and transmit COVID. That’s an important message,” he said. “If you are not careful and you can catch COVID. Your family catches COVID. Your co-workers catch COVID, and the people at your church catch COVID.”

Getting vaccinated is also important for people who have had COVID, because protection wears off in about six months.

“That protection against re-infection now is wearing thin,” Rhodes said.

For people who have had COVID and recovered, those antibodies plus a vaccine are actually giving them increased protection over people who have never gotten the virus. Rhodes called it the sweet spot for protection.

Still just letting people get infected is “way too dangerous a pathway,” he said. COVID infections have caused lingering health problems, damage to organs, and psychological problems.

For people who are waiting for a vaccine that doesn’t have any side effects, Rhodes said don’t wait.

“It’s like waiting for the best computer ever, the best iPhone ever and never buying one, because you’re always waiting for the best one,” he said. “That’s the same thing in vaccines. If you sit back and wait for the one with zero side effects, you’ll never get vaccinated but you will get COVID.”

Rhodes thinks we are about halfway through this pandemic. he thinks that over time, COVID will become less and less severe.

“COVID is adapting to people, the way people are adapting to COVID,” he said.

It’s called co-adaptation. In order for it to be successful, the virus has to change and become easy to spread, but less severe. Otherwise, the virus will kill off its host and destroy itself.

Rhodes said the original strain of the COVID-19 virus is now called the ancestral strain. Strains are determined through a technique called genetic sequencing. It is sort of like looking for the strain’s fingerprint.

When a strain changes significantly enough, it becomes a new variant of a virus.

The COVID-19 variants are given names of Greek letters in order to differentiate them. The Greek letter Nu was skipped, because it sounds like the word new and that would be confusing, Rhodes said. For that reason, they went to omicron.

COVID-19 is the fifth virus in a family of coronaviruses, which includes the common cold, but human beings have adapted to the four other viruses, he said.

“That is the goal and hope,” he said, that we will adapt to COVID.

“The problem is we have to deal with the realities that we have right now,” he said. “We are in the middle of a firefight.”