“I feel good about it because I’ve been wearing one almost constantly for the last few years. It became a habit,” said Barragan, wearing a mask while running errands on Wednesday. Los Angeles County, home to 10 million residents, faces a return to a broad indoor mask mandate later this month if current trends in hospital admissions continue, county health director Barbara Ferrer said this week. Nationally, the latest outbreak of COVID-19 is due to the highly contagious BA.5 variant, which now accounts for 65% of cases with its cousin BA.4 contributing another 16%. The variants have shown a remarkable ability to overcome the protection afforded by vaccination. With new Omicron variants pushing hospitalizations and deaths higher again in recent weeks, states and cities are reevaluating their responses and the White House is stepping up efforts to alert the public. Some experts said the warnings are too little, too late. “It’s long past the time when the warning could have been issued there,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Translational Research Institute, who has called BA.5 “the worst variant yet.” Global trends for the two mutants have been evident for weeks, experts said — they’re quickly outpacing older variants and pushing cases higher wherever they occur. However, Americans have thrown off their masks and returned to travel and social gatherings. And they have largely ignored booster shots, which protect against the worst effects of COVID-19. Courts have blocked federal mask and vaccine mandates, tying the hands of US officials. “We’re learning a lot from how the virus works elsewhere, and we should apply that knowledge here,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health measurement sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. The White House’s coordinator for COVID-19, Dr. Ashish Jha, appeared on morning television on Wednesday, urging booster shots and renewed vigilance. But Mokdad said federal health officials need to push harder on indoor masks, early detection and early antiviral treatment. “They’re not doing their best,” Mokdad said. The administration’s challenge, in the White House’s view, is not their messaging, but people’s willingness to listen to it — because of pandemic fatigue and the politicization of the virus response. For months, the White House has encouraged Americans to use free or low-cost rapid home tests to detect the virus, as well as the free and effective antiviral treatment Paxlovid that protects against serious illness and death. On Tuesday, the White House response team called on all adults 50 and older to urgently get a booster if they haven’t already done so this year — and warned people not to wait for the next generation of shots due in the fall, when they can get the own sleeves and get some protection now. Requiring masks again “helps us reduce the risk,” Ferrer told Los Angeles County supervisors. He is expected to discuss details of the county’s potential new mandate during a public health briefing Thursday afternoon. “I recognize that when we return to universal indoor coverage to reduce high prevalence, for many it will feel like a step backwards,” Ferrer said on Tuesday. For most of the pandemic, Los Angeles County has required masks in certain indoor spaces, including health care facilities, subway trains and buses, airports, jails and homeless shelters. The new order will extend the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared offices, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail stores, restaurants and bars, theaters and schools. It is unclear what enforcement might look like. Under previous orders, officials favored educating people over issuing citations and fines. Sharon Fayette tore off her mask as she exited a Lyft ride in Los Angeles on Wednesday and groaned when told another universal mask requirement might be coming. “Oh man, when will it end?” he wondered about the pandemic. Fayette said she was exhausted by the shift in regulations and doubted most residents would follow another mandate. “I just think people have gone beyond it, beyond all the rules,” he said. Barragan said he learned a hard lesson about the effectiveness of masks when he went barefaced to a film industry mixer last month in Los Angeles. “I thought it would be OK because we were all outdoors,” Barragan, 35, said. A few days later he started feeling sick and sure enough, he tested positive. He had avoided contracting the virus for more than two years because he was religious about the mask. “Once I got it out, I got it!” laughed. The nation’s brief lull in COVID deaths has reversed. Over the past month, daily deaths have been falling, though they never reached last year’s low, and deaths are now rising again. The average daily death toll in the US rose 26% over the past two weeks to 489 on July 12. The coronavirus isn’t killing nearly as many people as it did last fall and winter, and experts don’t expect the death toll to reach those levels again anytime soon. But hundreds of daily deaths from respiratory disease in the summer would normally be unbelievable, said Andrew Noymer, a professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine. He noted that in Orange County, California, 46 people died of COVID-19 in June. “That would be all hands on deck,” Neumer said. “People would say, ‘There’s this crazy new flu that’s killing people in June.’ Instead, simple, proven precautions are not taken. Immunizations, including booster shots for those who qualify, reduce the risk of hospitalization and death — even against the latest variants. However, fewer than half of eligible US adults have received a single booster dose, and only about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older who are eligible for a second booster have received one. “This was a failed booster campaign,” Topol said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still uses the term “fully vaccinated” for people with two Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. “They haven’t understood that two shots are completely insufficient,” he said. Neumer said that if he were in charge of the nation’s response to the pandemic he would be equal to the American people in an effort to get their attention in this third year of the pandemic. He would tell Americans to take it seriously, mask up indoors, and “until we get better vaccines, there will be a new normal disease that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year and affects life expectancy.” That message probably wouldn’t fly for political reasons, Neumer acknowledged. It also may not fly with people who are tired of taking precautions after more than two years of the pandemic. Valerie Walker of New Hope, Pennsylvania, is aware of the latest increase, but hardly worried. “I was definitely worried then,” she said of the early days of the pandemic, with images of bags on nightly newscasts. “Now there is fatigue, things were getting better and there was a vaccine. So, on a scale of one to 10, I’d say I’m probably a four.” Even with two friends now sick with the virus and her husband recently recovered, Walker says she has bigger problems. “Sometimes when I think about it, I put on a mask when I go into a store, but honestly, it’s not an everyday thought for me,” he said.
Johnson, AP Medical Writer, reported from Washington state. Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan in New York and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed.
The Associated Press Health and Science Section is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Division. AP is solely responsible for all content.
