PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Easter and Passover holiday weekend sparked a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said the increase was partially because of more infectious COVID-19 variants, but also partially because of human behavior.
“I think it’s a little bit of both," she explained. "People are relaxing. Right now in our community, the virus is even more contagious than it was. So you put those things together and you see the kind of cases now. We’re up to 218 (daily) cases on average.”
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Dr. Eric Sachinwalla, Einstein Medical Center's medical director for infection prevention and control, said that testing for variants remained limited. But the B117 variant has become the most common strain, as predicted. It can be 50% more contagious.
“Fortunately, the mitigation things are exactly the same," Sachinwalla said. “It’s still maintaining distancing, it’s still wearing a mask if you’re not fully vaccinated, and even if you are fully vaccinated, keep wearing a mask when you’re out in public.”
However, he said people are letting down their guard.
“When you have a virus that’s more transmissible, and you have people who are not yet vaccinated and are starting to scale back some of their own mitigation, it definitely creates a situation," he explained.
Sachinwalla compared it to driving a car, saying you wear a seat belt, you don’t tailgate, and you follow the speed limit.
“It’s all about layers of protection and layers of risk mitigation, so it’s not like, 'Well, I did this, so I’m wearing a seatbelt, so I can drive 120 miles per hour,' " Sachinwalla added. "Everything works together.”
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He said experts have seen that the COVID-19 vaccine is very effective. While they have witnessed some people test positive after they have been vaccinated, they have not found cases of severe disease.
Sachinwalla explained that no vaccine is ever 100%, but the rate of protection in a year for a new virus is, in his words, "the best thing we ever could have asked for."
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