The Atlantic: "The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried"

PandemiX Center Director Professor Lone Simonsen was interviewed by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic.

Zang writes: "Denmark, which dropped coronavirus restrictions amidst sky-high Omicron cases, has been able to do so because it has excellent booster coverage down to age 50. Ninety-five percent of this group has been fully vaccinated, and over 90 percent have had three doses. As a result, Omicron has “been not so bad in terms of health impact,” says Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at Roskilde University in Denmark. Cases have fallen a bit off their peak in Denmark, but excess mortality is already back to near zero. To minimize hospitalizations in addition to deaths, Simonsen says the percent vaccinated over age 40 is crucial too, because the median age of COVID hospitalization is lower than that of death. (Hospitalization risk also rises steeply with age, just not quite as steeply as death risk.) Among Danes in their 40s, vaccine coverage is not universal but still very good: 90 percent are fully vaccinated, and three-quarters are boosted."

Read Zang's full paper here 'The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried'.