11/14/2023 0 Comments Covid 19 second lockdown usSTEIN: But, you know, people are probably hearing more about friends and family catching COVID again. But they see that the conditions are there and are watching closely. Here's how Caitlin Rivers from Johns Hopkins put it.ĬAITLIN RIVERS: It's like when meteorologists are, like, watching a storm forming offshore and they're not sure if it'll pick up steam yet or if it'll even turn towards the mainland. So the CDC's nowhere near ratcheting up recommendations for what people should do, like, you know, urging routine masking again. STEIN: A jump that could keep shooting up, but not necessarily. JACKSON: If you sort of imagine the decline in cases looking like a ski slope going down, down, down for the last six months, we're just starting to see a little bit of a - almost like a little ski jump at the bottom. Jackson stresses the numbers are still very, very low - far lower than they were the last three summers. STEIN: You know, for now, it's very much a kind of wait-and-see situation. So Rob, how worried should we be about this? But that could change in the coming weeks if hospitalizations keep increasing. In fact, they're at the lowest they've been since the CDC started tracking them. Now, most of those ending up in a hospital are older, like in their 70s, 80s and 90s. This could be the start of a late summer wave. And just this week, for the first time in a long time, we've seen hospitalizations tick up as well. We've seen the early indicators go up for the past several weeks. Brendan Jackson, the CDC's COVID-19 incident manager, says officials spotted a key bellwether.īRENDAN JACKSON: After roughly six, seven months of steady declines, things are starting to tick back up again. The amount of virus being detected in wastewater, the percentage of people testing positive and the number of people going to emergency rooms because of COVID all started creeping back up at the beginning of July. STEIN: Yeah, you know, the CDC says all the metrics suggest that the virus is still out there and just hasn't given up the fight. SUMMERS: So Rob, I just have to be honest with you - this is not the kind of update many people want to hear. NPR health correspondent Rob Stein joins us now to explain. But so far, COVID's toll looks nothing like the last three summers. That is according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "If you're going to be in a crowded public place - the subway, an airplane, a crowded theater - those are the kind of places I would at least consider wearing a mask.Yet another summer wave of COVID infections may have started. "Who wants to get sick while on vacation?" she says. On "CBS Mornings" Friday, Gounder added she'll be masking up for an upcoming flight - and says others may want to do the same. Mask mandates are challenging because they make people really bent out of shape out of proportion to the ask." "If I were with people who aren't public health-trained, I would wear a mask, particularly in crowded situations, because I really don't have time for COVID. Danielle Ompad, an epidemiologist at the NYU School of Global Public Health, said "It's a bit like putting the genie back in the bottle." Still, she has personally started wearing a mask again recently in crowded places, where the risk of exposure is greater. Still, some experts fear it could be hard to convince Americans to don masks again even if COVID cases continue to rise. "If I really cannot afford to get sick, or I am going to be seeing somebody who is at increased risk for a bad outcome if infected, I will take extra precautions," he said. When determining when to be especially careful, LaPook said he thinks about what he'll be doing the next two weeks. After news broke about the BA.2.86 variant earlier this month, the CDC said the agency's advice on protecting yourself from COVID-19 - which includes wearing a high-quality mask among other recommendations listed on its website - "remains the same."
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