COVID-19 hospitalizations increased by over 12% nationwide, according to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the week of July 22, new hospital admissions were at 8,035, which was 870 more than the previous week.
Dr. Robert Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco told L.A. Morning News that although there is a “mild” uptick in cases, it’s nothing to panic over.
“It's not night and day. It's not catastrophic,” he said. “If you've been on the fence in terms of how careful to be, for example, you were reluctant to resume indoor dining or reluctant to take the mask off, it's now time to think about, some more caution but it's not like it's a massive surge.”
He added that if you’re a “novid” (someone who hasn’t had COVID-19), there’s probably a chance you had it and didn’t know.
Jill Rosenthal, director of public health policy at the Center for American Progress told the Hill the seasonal rise is not a surprise. “We have had a summer wave of COVID for the last few summers and so it’s not surprising to see an increase in COVID right now," she said.
Warmer weather invites more gatherings and more people closer together equals more COVID cases, experts said.
“There's about a 50-50 chance that if you don't think you were infected you were and just had an asymptomatic case,” Wachter said. “And I think that there is some data that's come out recently that looks at genetic predictors. There are some people that have a little bit of additional protection against getting infected, but I'd say by and large, the chances are all of us are gonna get infected at some point unless you're being über-careful forever, which is really a very hard thing to do.”
Dr. Wachter said a new vaccine is coming out in the fall that is “focused on the variants that are in play now.”
“If you haven't gotten a booster or been infected in six months, I do think it's worth getting, getting the booster when you have a chance,” he said.
When it comes to whether or not you should take Paxlovid, he said it all comes down to how old you are.
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