- The Washington Times - Wednesday, August 23, 2023

COVID-19 is surging again in the U.S., reviving the polarizing debate over masks and mandates even though the risk of hospitalization and death remains low compared to much of the pandemic.

Weekly hospitalizations from the virus reached more than 12,600 by mid-August, or about double the level in June, according to federal data, as an alphabet soup of variants and new viral sub-lineages circulate.

Those figures pale compared to the 150,000 weekly hospitalizations at the height of the omicron wave in early 2022 and 44,000 per week in February, though the uptick is sparking the return of anti-virus measures that seemed extinct.

An increase in Los Angeles cases prompted one studio, Lionsgate, to circulate a memo ordering employees on certain floors of its building to wear N-95 or KN-95 masks, according to a memo obtained by the Deadline outlet.

Kaiser Permanente, a prominent health care provider, brought back its mask mandate at facilities in Santa Rosa, California, citing a multi-week increase in cases.

Atlanta-based Morris Brown College announced over the weekend that all staff and students will be required to wear masks due to an uptick in local cases, though employees can remove the coverings when they are alone.

Word of the mask mandates spread quickly online and sparked a furious backlash from some corners, with “do not comply” trending on the X platform.

“I don’t think the term surge is appropriate at this stage of COVID-19. However, cases are up all over the country,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The good news is that cases are “extremely decoupled from severe disease as a result of immunity in the population,” he said. “Hospitals are not threatened.”

The coronavirus that dominated global discourse in 2020 and 2021 is largely an afterthought for many Americans. Face masks are rarely seen in public, except for the occasional cautious shopper or subway rider, and prominent case trackers gave up monitoring the virus earlier this year given uneven reporting from people who mostly test for the virus at home.

Most of the headlines around COVID-19 this year stemmed from backward-looking efforts to understand whether the virus spilled over from the animal kingdom or originated in a Chinese lab.

Americans who catch the virus tend to have mild cases. Many people have built up a wall of immunity to severe disease from prior infection or vaccination.

Deaths have remained relatively stable and remained below 500 per week in the most recent federal tabulation from mid-July. It’s a far cry from this year’s high of 3,600 per week in February and a pandemic high of 25,000 per week in January 2021.

The surge in cases and the uptick in hospitalizations could be due to waning levels of immunity, or because people are huddling together indoors against the crippling summer heat.

“We have seen this type of rise every summer when it comes to COVID-19,” Dr. Adalja said.

President Biden hasn’t given any indication that the administration will push for stringent measures against COVID-19, despite his polarizing attempts to preserve mask rules and impose vaccine mandates on certain populations earlier in his term.

Mr. Biden faces reelection next year, and the few instances of local mandates sparked a furious backlash.

“Refuse to comply. Nullify!” the Tenth Amendment Center tweeted Tuesday.

The administration is, however, set to approve and promote updated COVID-19 booster shots this fall.

COVID-19 vaccine makers agreed earlier this year to tailor the booster shots to the XBB variant. New variants, such as the BA.2.86 type that’s being monitored by the World Health Organization, have emerged but drugmakers are confident the booster will be effective against sub-lineages that are emerging in real time.

The new shots should be available by mid-to-late September, according to Kathleen Conley, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“These vaccines will be updated with the goal of providing the best protection against currently circulating strains,” she said. “CDC will make recommendations and communicate their use should they be authorized or approved for use by FDA.”

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.

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