PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — As Philadelphia released its plans regarding COVID-19 mitigation efforts, many health experts agree it’s a good time to start unwinding some of the things like mandates that we’ve implemented to slow the spread of the virus.
Dr. Darren Mareiniss, an emergency medicine doctor and clinical faculty at Einstein Medical Center, said as we’ve seen over the past two years, there will be times when cases spike and times when they recede.
“It's only fair and reasonable that we decrease mitigation measures when the amount of COVID in the community declines," he said.
“Basically, there is some risk to unmasking indoors. But if there's not a lot of community spread at that time, there's less risk.”
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But he added that such mitigation measures should go back in place when cases rise past a certain point.
Dr. Mareiniss said that while outcomes like severe disease and death are gaining importance in making decisions, overall case counts are still important to watch.
To illustrate, he said the percentage of deaths from the recent spike wasn’t nearly as high as it was in the first couple COVID-19 waves, but the overall number of deaths across the country is still over 2,000 per day, with most of those among people who are unvaccinated.
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“In the end, our hospitalization numbers were higher with omicron, and our deaths were very high, too. A small percent of a very large number is still bad," Dr. Mareiniss said.
"You’ve got to look at how many people are getting it, and even without lower mortality, you could still be in trouble.”
He says vaccines continue to be the best defense against severe disease and death, and he has been frustrated by people saying omicron isn’t as dangerous as previous variants.
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