(NEW YORK) — When the omicron wave hit the United States, it spread throughout the country like wildfire.

Different models estimate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of Americans had been infected with the variant by the end of the surge.

So, what does that mean for the rest of the U.S. population that did not contract COVID-19 during the last wave?

Because omicron has shown the ability to cause breakthrough infections despite vaccination status, this has led to fears that everyone will catch the virus at some point. However, it is important to clarify that the COVID vaccines continue to be highly effective in its primary purpose in preventing hospitalization and death.

However, public health experts said it’s not inevitable Americans who have not gotten COVID yet eventually will, and that there are several reasons people have been able to avoid infection so far, including certain behaviors such as being serious about masking and social distancing, vaccination rates and maybe even genetics.

Why some people haven’t gotten COVID yet

Doctors said there are several reasons millions of Americans have yet to contract the virus.

One of those reasons is human behaviors, meaning people take proper precautions to lower their risk of getting infected.

“Sometimes people don’t get infected because they’re extremely cautious,” Dr. Mark Siedner, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News. “There are people who have their own health behaviors or are concerned about their own health or their loved ones’ health.”

He continued, “Maybe they have comorbidities … they may be the kind of people who are largely homebound, or not really interacting with others or are particularly careful with things like social distancing and masking, and that certainly can stop a lion’s share of infections or certainly decrease the risk to where it’s unlikely you’d be infected.”

These people are also more likely to have been vaccinated and boosted, and the experts said it’s impossible to disregard the effect vaccination rates have had on preventing infections among Americans.

Dr. Jonathan Grein said there are also social and environmental reasons that could determine why some Americans have been infected and others haven’t, including how much time people spend with others and where they interact.

“Some people may come into more contact with people more regularly than others,” Grein, director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, told ABC News. “There’s probably environmental reasons as well, the virus is probably transmitted more efficiently in certain circumstances like classically the indoor, poorly-ventilated space compared to outside.”

However, genetics could also be playing a role.

Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said similar circumstances have been seen in people who were at high risk for HIV but did not contract the disease.

“One of the things that was discovered was people who had mutations in [a certain] receptor … and that was associated with not getting infected with HIV and in the uncommon people who do get infected, very slow progression to AIDS,” he told ABC News.

Although there has not yet been a clearly identified gene, Ray said it’s feasible some people are genetically less susceptible to COVID.

Is infection with COVID-19 inevitable?

The experts said they don’t believe that infection with COVID-19 is inevitable or at least inevitable for everyone.

“The fact that we’re now two years in and a substantial number of people have not yet been infected is good evidence that it’s not inevitable everyone will get it,” Grein said. “One thing we’ve clearly identified is that being vaccinated is the most important variable in deciding how protected somebody may be.

However, Ray said he thinks Americans who are unvaccinated but haven’t contracted the virus yet eventually will.

“As these variants have become more and more infectious, the likelihood that those people will get infected seems significant,” he said. “I do think it’s likely that people who have not been vaccinated and not had COVID will eventually get it because we are not going to be tracking infections as closely as we have in the past and so there will be less awareness as the virus renters the community … and at some point their bubble will burst if they are not immune.”

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, said the COVID situation in Hong Kong is a “horror story” of what can happen in an unvaccinated country.

Hong Kong currently has the world’s highest COVID-19 death rate with a seven-day rolling average of 37.68 per million people, according to Our World in Data.

“Many people were vaccinated in Hong Kong, but it was the reverse of the U.S.,” he said. “In the U.S, so many seniors are vaccinated and boosted, but in Hong Kong, it was the opposite. Very few seniors were vaccinated so that when they did get it, even something ‘milder’ like omicron, many people were still dying, so that is a cautionary tale.”

There is no number that determines when the U.S. has enough immunity

Early in the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts said the U.S. needed to vaccinate 75% to 85% to achieve herd immunity.

Currently, only 65.3% of all Americans are fully vaccinated.

Then, when U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last month he would be dropping the remaining COVID-19 restrictions in England, supporters said one of the reasons was because government figures showed more than 98% of the adult population in England has detectable COVID-19 antibodies either from previous infection or from vaccination.

But officials said there is no number in the U.S. for which officials can declare there is “enough immunity.”

“The game has been changed to some extent because the virus has been able to infect so many people and evolve,” Ray said. “It’s level of infectivity right now is so high that the levels of antibodies required to prevent infection, the level we need to achieve is hard to sustain for a long period of time.”

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(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — A hospital in Michigan is giving birthing parents a new way to stay connected during a cesarean section delivery.

Spectrum Health Butterworth, a hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, allows parents to watch the birth on a monitor display next to the operating table.

That’s how Amanda Koop got the first glimpse of her son, Charlie, when she gave birth to him at Spectrum Health Butterworth on Nov. 24, 2021.

“They turned the camera toward me right when they were going to pull him out,” Koop told “Good Morning America.” So, similar to a vaginal birth, I saw him come up and out, which was great.”

Koop, 36, had an unplanned C-section with Charlie, her first child.

She said that once it was decided she would be undergoing a C-section, a nurse asked her if she wanted the option to watch the delivery, which she otherwise would have not been able to witness. As is typical with a C-section, Spectrum Health Butterworth uses a drape to separate the expectant parents from the surgical procedure.

“I wanted to use the camera, because it could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I didn’t want to miss those moments, his first breath, that can be something that sometimes you could miss in a C-section,” said Koop, who added that the camera also made the C-section “less anxiety-provoking.”

“For me to be able to see him in those moments, OK, he’s out and he looks great, that was extremely calming and reassuring,” she said. “There’s a lot happening in those [operating rooms]. They’re loud and they’re bright, and I could kind of focus right on him, which was really nice.”

The camera and monitor system is the same one that doctors themselves use in other surgical procedures, such as laparoscopic surgeries, according to Dr. Cheryl Wolfe, a practicing, board-certified OBGYN and vice president and department chief of women’s health at Spectrum Health, a Michigan-based health system.

Wolfe said Spectrum Health Butterworth, which delivers around 7,500 babies annually, is the only hospital she knows of in the country that has applied surgical camera technology to C-sections.

“We’re using this technology that’s been around but using it in a different way, and that is not the norm across the country,” she said. “I’m hoping that there will be more hospitals and labor and delivery units that opt to put this in place. I think their patients will be asking for it.”

Nearly 32% of all births in the United States are done by C-section, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since the majority of C-sections are not expected, it can often feel startling for expectant parents to go from the comfort of the labor and delivery room to the sterility of the operating room, according to Wolfe.

She said the goal of giving parents the option to watch the delivery is to “flip the script” and make it a more personal experience.

“Anytime you have something unplanned, especially around something as momentous as having your child, you’re going to have some trepidation about, ‘Oh, now I need a C-section. Now I need surgery. What does that mean?'” Wolfe said. “Now you’re given an option where you can actually … watch the process, something previously you were unable to do because the technology wasn’t in place.”

The medical team is able to move the monitor so that parents can watch what they want of the delivery, as was the case during Koop’s C-section.

“I did not want to see the initial incision and getting down to the baby, so I just saw those parts that I thought were important,” Koop said, adding that the monitor’s location and flexibility also gave her husband the chance to stay by her side while choosing what he wanted to see.

“I think it can be kind of scary for people, what am I going to see, but the team does an amazing job of kind of blocking things that you don’t need to see and really focusing on that little baby,” she said. “I just thought it made such a difference in my delivery. I didn’t miss a thing.”

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(WASHINGTON) — In advance of the rollout of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s new three-digit number, legislators have announced a bill to help fund its implementation.

The bill includes federal funding and guidance for states and localities preparing for the July launch, including mental health block grants and $100 million to partner with cities on mobile crisis response teams to help stabilize people in need. It would also increase the amount of federal funding for the Lifeline, which runs a national backup network to receive calls that can’t be picked up at the state and local levels, and provide $10 million for an awareness campaign about the new 988 number — modeled after 911.

The 24-hour hotline has been in service since 2005 and has received more than 20 million calls.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration expects calls to the Lifeline to more than double during the first full year of the three-digit number, and advocates say the Lifeline is underfunded and understaffed to meet the expected increase in call volume.

Despite the effort to improve the system, advocates say, people in crisis could face delays — or might not be able to reach a counselor at all without more funding.

Rep. Tony Cárdenas, D-Calif., announced the funding bill to address that issue at a press conference Thursday.

“[My bill] is to go ahead and move 988 in the right direction — to move 988 in a direction where we’re going to have local states and local city councils and local county supervisors and mayors and governors and legislators, state legislators, to start to pass funding bills,” Cárdenas told ABC News.

The 988 Implementation Act is also co-sponsored by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.

Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said about 80% of calls to the Lifeline can be de-escalated over the phone. Of the 20% that can’t, she said, about 70% can be resolved with the help of mobile crisis response teams. The rest can go to crisis stabilization centers, after which a majority can be discharged back into the community without needing to be hospitalized.

“Mobile crisis teams, which provide an alternative to law enforcement, are so critical. Relying on law enforcement is just an ineffective way to respond to [mental health] crises. That’s not the job law enforcement signed up for, nor should we be asking them to do that,” Wesolowski said.

She added that people experiencing a mental health crisis are often taken to emergency departments that don’t specialize in psychiatric care.

“So this would really help provide capital grants and other capacity resources to build crisis receiving and stabilization facilities that really serve as kind of a psychiatric emergency room that provides that short-term stabilization, [and] connections to additional care — whether that’s helping somebody return to the community, or in some cases, might be inpatient hospitalization,” Wesolowski said. “Overwhelmingly, when this whole continuum is availabl, we can avoid a lot of that hospitalization, incarceration, homelessness and other negative outcomes that we often see with our current crisis response system.”

Taun Hall, whose son Miles was shot and killed in 2019 at age 23 while experiencing a mental health crisis in California, also spoke at the press conference. She said her family tried to get Miles help for two years, but it was “almost impossible.”

“Getting help is a reactive process and leads to criminalization, especially when police are involved and responsible for their care. This is exactly what happened to our family. I called 911 to get Miles help while he was experiencing a mental health emergency and Miles was criminalized for his Black skin,” Hall said. “He was shot and killed in the community where he lived and grew up for 18 years.”

“Everyone knows you dial 911,” Moulton said. “The same needs to be true for anyone, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you or a loved one is experiencing a mental health emergency. That’s the difference that this bill is going to make.”

Moulton, who introduced the legislation to designate 988 as the Lifeline number back in 2020, said it will save lives.

“We’ll save thousands, but we don’t want to miss a single one,” Moulton said. “We have to make sure that everybody is geared up. So no matter where you are, no matter what phone you have access to, you can get the help that you need, 24/7.”

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(NEW YORK) — While many people know a trip to the hairdresser can save you from a bad hair day, it could also save your life.

That was the case for an Illinois-based woman, Mary Rahilly, who had an appointment for a cut and color. Her hairstylist, Sharon Lupo, who she visits regularly, noticed something new and unusual on her scalp — and suggested that she visit a dermatologist.

“It was almost a discolored spot. I knew I had to tell her,” Lupo told Good Morning America.

After making a rush appointment, Rahilly’s doctor could almost immediately tell it was a form of cancer and proceeded to run a biopsy, which confirmed it.

The scalp is a common place for skin cancer, Dr. Ramona Beshad, assistant professor of dermatology at St. Louis University, told GMA.

“It’s a place where skin cancers tend to be diagnosed late, because oftentimes they’re covered by hair and not easy to see,” she said.

In Rahilly’s case, Lupo was able to get a good look at what was hiding underneath her client’s hair.

Luckily, Rahilly got the squamous cell on her scalp removed before it spread.

“She knows I’m grateful and that, you know, she’s an awesome person. She is,” Rahilly said. Lupo chimed in, sharing that Rahilly called her a hero.

Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States, with one in five Americans developing it by the age of 70, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

Because hairstylists can play an integral role in spotting skin cancer in this often-hidden area, Beshad started Stylists Against Skin Cancer, a program to teach cosmetology students how to properly identify these cancers.

There’s also another program Sty-Lives, short for Styling Hair and Saving Lives, that is led by two Ontario-based medical students and has launched across Canada with the Save Your Skin Foundation. The foundation trains hairdressers to spot lesions on the ears, faces and scalps of their clients.

Dr. Whitney Bowe, a dermatologist, shared some of her tips and best practices for spotting skin cancer with GMA.

“I highly recommend doing a self exam every month and looking at your skin closely from head to toe,” she said.

Bowe also recommends recruiting a friend or loved one to look at places you can’t see, such as behind your ears, your back and the back of your neck as well as the legs.

When looking for skin cancer, Bowe says to look at:

A- Asymmetry

B- Border

C- Color

D- Diameter

E- Evolution

When it comes to the summer months, skin cancer prevention is key, according to Bowe.

She suggests broad spectrum sunscreen and re-applying every two hours to dry skin or more often if you are wet, swimming or sweating.

“But sunscreen is not enough,” she added. “Also wear sun protective fabric, a broad rimmed hat, sunglasses, and seek shade especially when the sun is at its peak.”

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