BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (WBRC) – Health officials urge vaccines as the Omicron variant spreads across Alabama.

With only 47% of the state fully vaccinated, UAB infectious disease expert Dr Jeanne Marrazzo said more people need the vaccine to protect themselves against the more infectious Omicron strain.

Reports show the new variant may not cause such severe illness, but Marrazzo said too many young people still think they won’t get very sick and too many people rely on natural immunity. She said these are not strong enough for the new strain and without the vaccine Marrazzo said you would only spread the virus further.

“Your decision to be infected is unfortunately not only going to affect you,” she said. “It will serve as an incredible source of contagiousness in the future.”

Dr Marrazzo said more data is still needed to know exactly how much disease this new variant is causing and that it’s too early to assume you’d be okay with catching it.

“How confident are we that all of these infections will not be serious? Said Marrazzo. “I think we need more data to say this for sure and we don’t know if this is true in cases where people have other co-morbidities.”

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