Calls for Covid face masks to return are ramping up amid increasing virus rates and the rise of a highly-mutated new variant. An Atlanta college has become the first since the government declared the pandemic over to mandate masks for students and staff just days after classes began.
Morris Brown College, a private liberal arts school, is requiring students and employees to wear face masks in hallways and lecture halls for two weeks due to ‘reports of positive cases among students.’
Officials have also told students to maintain social distancing and banned all parties and large student gatherings for two weeks. Meanwhile, in an editorial published by the American College of Physicians (ACP), Government doctors and public health experts in Seattle have called for face coverings to be made compulsory in all healthcare facilities once more.
They argue that hospital patients are at a higher risk of dying from or being seriously ill with Covid and would benefit from the ‘reduce[d] risk for Covid contracted in the hospital among patients and health care workers.’
The 10 experts — from Seattle & King County health department and the University of Washington — said we should ‘find ways to adapt to this new reality’ rather than ‘accepting unnecessary risks to patient and provider health.’
Talk of masking up in public has been gaining traction after the CDC said it was monitoring new Covid variant BA.2.86. Numbers of Covid cases in Georgia have increased for three weeks in a row, but overall, the number of infections and hospitalizations remains low.
Meanwhile, the academic paper was likely written before the new variants came to light, and before Covid hospitalization rates started rising in the US.
Earlier today, a former FDA boss said he is ‘pretty concerned’ the variant known as BA.X, BA.2.86 or Pirola, which is ‘highly mutated’ and therefore likely to be better at escaping the immune systems of vaccinated or previously infected people.
Dr Scott Gottlieb acknowledged there is no evidence the variant is deadlier than older versions of the virus, but Covid fatalities in the US have already started to creep up, though they remain at near historic lows.
Hospitalizations and fatalities are now rising in the US, however, although these are coming up from historic lows and still well below this time last year.
In the article published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the ACP’s academic medical journal, said there is ‘rationale to integrate precautions’, including ‘the ongoing disease burden among persons at highest risk for severe Covid-19, the large proportion of transmission from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases, uncertainty about the future course of the pandemic, and the effects of post–Covid-19 conditions.’
Statements expressed in the journal do not necessarily reflect the views of the ACP. The researchers recognized that Covid cases have dropped dramatically since the pandemic due to vaccines, antivirals and increased community immunity, but said that ‘severe outcomes’ are still occurring due to the virus. They argued that patients in hospitals are far more vulnerable due to age and underlying conditions.
