When is it really safe to take off your mask? This question is gaining more urgency as the Omicron wave collapses and coronavirus rules ease. Here is what we know:
The next step for schools is under discussion as indoor masking set to ease on Feb. 15 in many settings in California.The California Department of Public Health has credited the state’s temporary mask mandate as essential to prevent the state’s winter surge from getting worse.
Even a 10% increase in mask-wearing can have an outsized effect in reducing coronavirus transmission, tripling the likelihood of slowing the virus’ spread, the memoWhile the Omicron variant did not result in hospital illness for many infected people, the enormity of this surge still led to— far worse than in pre-pandemic times. Even now, hospitals are still being forced to postpone scheduled procedures.
The Omicron surge “still has put our hospitals over the edge,” Pan said. “This has really, really stretched our hospitals and, again, they are improving … but it’s still quite above [a baseline] and quite stretched — with less staffing than we’ve had in prior surges.”, with 44% of adult intensive care unit beds filled with coronavirus-positive patients, well above the statewide rate of 34%. In the San Joaquin Valley, just 10% of staffed adult ICU beds are available.
So even with Omicron being relatively less severe than earlier strains, “we still aren’t back to severity levels that are more similar to flu,” Pan