Despite relaxed masking requirements, COVID-19 variants are still spreading throughout the country, and some health experts are advising people to resume masking whenever they can.
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It's particularly necessary in the Bay Area, where one in 30 people may be spreading COVID-19 without realizing it, according to Dr. Bob Wachter, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, on KCBS Radio's "Ask an Expert" on Wednesday.
"The number I use for that is what we call our 'asymptomatic test positivity rate' at UCSF," he told Holly Quan and Jason Brooks. Essentially, people coming in for other procedures or treatment who don’t believe they have COVID-19 are tested.
"That number has been as low as half a percent at some points during the pandemic, it's up to 3% now," said Wachter. The highest it's been has been around 10-12%, during the biggest spikes.
This means that there is a lot of COVID-19 being spread around by people who may not know they have it, he said. "You probably know people who have it and I have friends and family who have it now."
In light of this, masking is now more essential than ever, particularly in places indoors where people are coming and going, like the grocery store.
"It's just important for people to have their eyes open," he said, and understand that going maskless right now is a "fairly risky thing to do," if people are still trying to avoid getting COVID-19.
Right now, in a group of 30 to 50 people, it's likely that someone there has COVID-19, particularly after the rise of omicron.
Omicron and its subvariants just keep getting "better and better at its job of infecting people," said Wachter.
That, combined with the recent dropping of masking mandates throughout the country, will likely result in "more COVID-19 in our world," he said.
And the new subvariants are also reinfecting people who’ve already had COVID-19, even omicron itself, months prior.
"If I had omicron in December, January, and I felt like that was my get-out-of-jail-free card, it's okay for me not to wear a mask in a crowded place, because I can’t or won't get it again, I don't think that's right anymore," said Wachter.
These omicron subvariants are also more effective at evading at home testing, with people frequently testing negative in the first initial days of their infection.
"If you feel sick with symptoms consistent with COVID-19," he said. "I would not take a single negative home test as the definitive that you don’t have it."
People need to continue testing themselves for days afterwards, to assess how long they might still be positive after the CDC recommended five days of isolation.
Fortunately, treatments have improved and become more widely accessible, and the omicron subvariants aren’t causing as serious illness in those infected.
Hospitals aren't as overwhelmed as they were in previous surges, and fewer people are dying from the virus.
"It's kind of a mixed bag," said Wachter. "But there certainly is enough omicron in the environment that if you’re choosing to be careful, as I am, I think now is the time to re-up your game from what you might have been doing a month ago."
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