“The entire Philadelphia region is seeing COVID-19 cases rise dangerously,” Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole said in a statement, but added health officials will not be reinstating a mask mandate at this time. “We strongly recommend that every Philadelphian and visitors wear a mask whenever they’re indoors in public.”
The number of residents testing positive for the virus is as high as it was in the first week of February, health officials said, and roughly 142 people are in city hospitals with the virus — up from 79 three weeks ago.
“The pandemic is not over. Most all hospitals continue to see COVID patients, with the majority of patients hospitalized for COVID being not fully vaccinated,” Dr. Tony S. Reed, chief medical officer at Temple Health, said in a statement.
“Variants are going to come,” Adams said. “If every variant that comes, we move into shutdown thoughts, we move into panicking, we’re not going to function as a city.”
“We were hit with the BA.1 — wave of infections in December, January. We saw BA.2. And now we’re seeing, in a large chunk of the country, BA.2.12.1. They are more contagious with more immune escape, and they are driving a lot of the increases in infection that we’re seeing across the nation right now,” Jha said in Wednesday’s briefing. ” And that is a huge challenge.”
But America is in a better place than it was two years ago, he said, “largely because of the capabilities that science has delivered for us: vaccines, boosters, therapeutics, testing, masks.”
“We’ve got to keep using that as the virus evolves and as the virus continues to do what it’s doing,” Jha said.
Quoted from Various Sources
Published for: WATPFC
More Stories
Betty. The Chihuahua on Will Trent | Dogster
What To Do If Your Puppy Gets Motion Sickness
Can Cats in the Office Help Lower Employee Stress Levels? The Fascinating Answer! | The Conscious Cat