If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts.
That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist.
“Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said.
“At least until the numbers start to drop again, it would be appropriate for President Biden to take some precautions and wear a mask in crowds.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges people to “wear a mask with the best fit, protection, and comfort for you,” and it notes that some people are at higher risk for severe illness from Covid-19. But the agency doesn’t make a broad recommendation for everyone to adopt masks. That could change if hospitalizations reach critical levels. The CDC recommends universal masking in jurisdictions that have 20 or more people with Covid per 100,000 in local hospitals and masking for high-risk individuals when 10 to 19.9 people per 100,000 are hospitalized from the virus.
Overall, there were about four new hospital admissions for every 100,000 people nationwide in the week ending August 12, which is considered low, according to CDC thresholds. No counties had high levels of Covid-19 hospitalizations. But 85 counties — about 3% of the country — were in the medium threshold. About a quarter of those counties were in Florida.
A new variant, BA.2.86, has captured scientists’ attention because it’s highly mutated, but so far it’s only been detected in a small number of people globally. Nonetheless, “it doesn’t look good … in terms of the virus’ nonstop evolution,” Topol said. The virus “keeps finding new ways to challenge humans, to find new hosts and repeat hosts, and it’s relentless.”
The CDC stopped reporting aggregate Covid-19 case counts this year, but a growing number of hospitalizations has triggered concern among those who track the disease.
Levels of the virus in wastewater from toilets — which can be an early indication of a Covid spike in a community — have doubled, said Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
A new booster designed to better protect against many of the commonly circulating strains of Covid will be out in a month or so, and most people can wait for that new shot to jumpstart their immunity, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
But if you’re over 65, are immunocompromised or haven’t had Covid recently, and you haven’t had another dose of the bivalent booster, you should get it now to protect yourself, he added.
The new booster coming this fall will target a family of Omicron subvariants called XBB and is expected to provide good protection against even newer versions, Topol said, but scientists are not sure how significant BA.2.86 will be.