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A late-summer wave of coronavirus infections has touched schools, workplaces and local government, as experts warned the public to brace for even more Covid-19 spread this fall and winter.
Hospitalizations have increased 24 percent in a two-week period ending Aug. 12, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wastewater monitoring suggests a recent rise in Covid infections in the West and Northeast. In communities across the United States, outbreaks have occurred in recent weeks at preschools, summer camps and office buildings.
Public health officials said that the latest increase in Covid hospitalizations is still relatively small and the vast majority of the sick are experiencing mild symptoms that are comparable to a cold or the flu. And most Americans, more than three months after the Biden administration allowed the 2020 declaration calling the coronavirus a public health emergency to expire, have shown little willingness to return to the days of frequent testing, mask wearing and isolation.
But for Americans who have become accustomed to feeling the nation has moved beyond Covid, the current wave could be a rude reminder that the emerging New Normal is not a world without the virus.
“We’re in almost the best place we’ve been in the pandemic since it began,” said Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But we are caught in the very uncomfortable area of having left the fog of the pandemic war and trying to understand what the sunrise on a normal post-Covid world looks like.”
In cities across the country, the remnants of coronavirus restrictions still remain, even if they are no longer observed. Retail stores may have signs in the windows requesting that patrons wear masks, but no one inside is wearing them. Years-old stickers asking customers to stand six feet apart in line are faded, worn and ignored. The occasional storefronts in major cities advertise free Covid-19 testing, though the spaces inside are empty.
More on the Coronavirus Pandemic
- An Uptick in Cases: Echoing patterns in prior years, coronavirus infections are slowly ticking up in parts of the United States, the harbinger of a possible fall and winter wave. Here is what to know.
- A New Variant: EG.5 is now the dominant Covid variant in the United States. How worried should people be about it? Here is what experts say.
- Reinfections: Experts who study Covid agree that for most people, getting infected for a second — or third or fourth — time is basically inevitable. But they are still unsure about how damaging reinfections can be.
- Covid’s Origins: More than three years into the coronavirus pandemic and untold millions of people dead, we still don’t know how it started. Here's what we do know — and why it matters.
And the virus is still disrupting work, school and politics: A Covid outbreak tied to a City Council meeting in Nashville this month left more than a dozen people infected, including council members, city employees and at least one reporter. One of the people who tested positive for Covid, Freddie O’Connell, a City Council member who is in a Sept. 14 runoff election for mayor, said it was a stark reminder that the virus had once again taken hold in the community.
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As students have returned to school in recent days, most administrators have signaled that they are not planning to return to stricter rules surrounding masks and testing, typically only asking parents to keep their children home when they are sick. In Chicago, where Covid-related hospitalizations are still extremely low but have crept up in recent weeks, the public school district promised to provide free rapid Covid tests to students and staff but did not intend to resume testing in schools.
Even in the face of rising Covid infections, there is a balance that should be struck in schools now, said Hedy N. Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works, a national group that promotes solutions to chronic absenteeism.
“We got trained to stay home for every sign of illness during the pandemic,” she said. “We actually have to shift norms again, to being judicious and thoughtful about when we keep kids home, and only keeping them home if we think it’s truly a problem.”
Dr. John M. Coleman, a pulmonary and critical care doctor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said he expected Covid infections to continue to increase this fall and winter, but he noted that the most recent strains of the virus were less severe than those that circulated early in the pandemic.
People who are hospitalized for Covid now tend to have pre-existing conditions or suppressed immune systems that make them more susceptible to severe symptoms, he said.
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