If it seems like half the people you know have come down with COVID-19 recently, you’re not alone. Southern California is in the midst of a sustained wave of coronavirus cases that has been building since the spring, and with two new wildly contagious variants bursting onto the scene, the wave is showing no signs of ending.
They’re actually subvariants of omicron, the strain that caused last winter’s huge surge. They don’t necessarily cause more severe disease, the difference is that they’re much, much more transmissible. They’ve also picked up a few mutations that make them more difficult for the immune system to recognize.
Even people who are fully vaccinated and boosted, or who had a recent infection, are getting breakthrough cases and reinfections. That’s pushed local case rates back to levels not seen since February, when the original omicron wave was ebbing. On the other hand, hospitalizations, while up significantly from their lows of a few months ago, haven’t risen back to the levels seen in previous surges.
If you think that a lower percentage of people being hospitalized or dying because of COVID-19 these days means you don’t need to take precautions like masking and getting vaccinated and boosted, public health experts would beg to differ.
