Omicron accounts for more than half of Oklahoma's COVID-19 cases in latest state surveillance

The Oklahoma State Department of Health said Tuesday that its sequencing found 57% omicron variant versus 43% delta variant over the holidays.

Oklahoma’s State Health Department was among the last to identify omicron within a state’s borders, which at least in part has prompted public health officials to reach for other means to get an idea of variant spread in Oklahoma.

Dr. Dale Bratzler said OU Health, using a proxy method, found Monday that about 80% of cases in the Oklahoma City metro area are likely omicron. Omicron was 37.5% of OU Health’s sampling last week.

Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer, explained that a second and different PCR test is performed on a random sampling of positive specimens to look for a “gene dropout” — PCR tests look for three “gene targets” to identify the virus — that is “highly suggestive” of the omicron variant rather than delta.

“So we’re pretty convinced — at least in the Oklahoma City metro — that most of the cases that we’re seeing are with omicron variant,” Bratzler said.

OU Health announced Dec. 22 that a “significant number of Tulsans” are infected with the omicron variant, which was detected Dec. 17 in a broad sampling of sewage representative of more than 30% of the state’s population.

OSDH says 175 samples sequenced in its most recent batches were omicron versus 131 that were delta. The agency didn’t provide a beginning or end date of when those specimens were collected.

Experts don’t expect this surge to subside soon.

Dr. Aaron Wendelboe, an OU epidemiologist and former lead epidemiologist for the state, said his model projects rises in cases and hospitalizations to persist through at least mid-February.

Watching what has played out with omicron outbreaks in South Africa and the U.K., Wendelboe said Oklahoma might see a peak sooner, though, because of how fast the variant spreads through a population.

He noted that his confidence level isn’t “super high” in his projection yet but that he hopes to be able to gather more data soon to improve his model.

“Unfortunately the data — especially for Oklahoma — is still quite poor,” Wendelboe said.

Oklahoma’s seven-day average of confirmed cases has eclipsed the delta wave’s peak.

The latest average was 2,990 cases reported Tuesday, which tops the 2,806 summer high reported Aug. 30.

The seven-day average has more than doubled from a week ago, when it was 1,462.

The latest wave has had more daily totals above 4,000 — three so far since Thursday — than the delta wave’s single instance on Aug. 26.

Daily case totals of 4,166 reported Thursday, 4,154 reported Saturday and 4,110 reported Tuesday are the three times the 4,000 mark has been surpassed as omicron takes over in Oklahoma and the U.S.

Statewide COVID hospitalizations, while climbing rapidly recently, aren’t as high as during the worst of the delta surge.

The state’s three-day average jumped to 1,015 inpatients Tuesday — up 113 or 12.5% in only one day from 902 reported Monday. The delta peak saw an average of 1,607 inpatients reported Aug. 26.

COVID hospitalizations are up 25% from a week ago (810), 47% from two weeks ago (691) and 99% from a month ago (510).

About 25% of current inpatients — 261 — are in intensive-care units.

Bratzler said he thinks that case rates rising faster than hospitalization and death rates in the U.S. is reflective of omicron’s characteristics: highly contagious but a severity of disease that is lesser to some degree.

Dr. David Kendrick, department chair of medical informatics at the OU School of Community Medicine, added that vaccination likely is contributing to a blunting in the rate of hospitalizations and deaths, too.

Wendelboe said it appears that omicron can cause quite severe disease in people who are unvaccinated and never previously infected.

State data show that 91% of COVID hospitalizations in the most recent 30 days are of unvaccinated individuals.

“These variants are mutating to find a population that’s most susceptible,” Wendelboe said. “Unfortunately, our children are a susceptible group, so we are seeing actually a higher portion of unvaccinated kids getting hospitalized with omicron.”

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