PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported a sharp increase in new COVID-19 cases on Monday.
The city is now seeing an average of 409 new cases a day.
New cases had been averaging around 250 per day for the last several weeks, but department spokesman James Garrow said cold weather and the Thanksgiving holiday have created conditions for a surge.
"We think a lot of it has to do with basically what happened last winter. People are getting together more, they’re inside more and it’s causing the disease to spread," said Garrow.
"This is exactly what we’ve been warning about, that when people get together indoors, sitting around the table and eating together with people you haven’t seen for a while and may not know the vaccination status of, really can lead to these jumps."
Garrow said the jump likely was not influenced by the arrival of the omicron variant. The first case in Philadelphia was reported Friday.
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However, he said it’s likely there are more cases and that the number will grow. The Health Department is once again urging precautions.
“The protections that we do for omicron are the same as they are for delta. So if knowing omicron is in the city is enough for folks to realize we really need to take masking and vaccination seriously, then we should do that," Garrow added.
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"Now is the time for folks to really sit up and take notice. We’re starting to see cases rise. We’re starting to see hospitalizations rise. And what we want to avoid is what we saw in some of those states in the upper Midwest where they had their hospitals overrun by people who are sick with this."
The Health Department is reporting 292 hospital cases of the virus, compared to 242 just last Thursday.