UMass Memorial reinstates staff mask mandate after 'dramatic increase' in COVID cases
UMass Memorial reinstates staff mask mandate after 'dramatic increase' in COVID cases
The hospital says that if the trend continues, it may need to require masks for anyone who enters the building.
With COVID cases and hospitalizations climbing, UMass Memorial is bringing back a mask mandate for staff when interacting with patients.
"We have continued to see a dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 positive employees over the past two weeks, which has led to exposures of both fellow caregivers and patients," a memo sent to staff on Thursday stated. "In response to this, as a protective measure for our staff and patients, effective immediately we are requiring mandatory caregiver masking for all patient encounters in all licensed clinical areas."
The Worcester hospital says that if the trend continues, it may need to require masks for anyone who enters the building. They will re-evaluate the mandate in four weeks, "unless worsening conditions dictate otherwise."
Nationwide, the CDC says new hospitalizations jumped 21.6% in the past week. The agency is also tracking a new, highly mutated COVID variant called BA.2.86 that experts think might fuel further spread.
Tldr; anyone have a summary of the newer strain and why it's getting worse?
"Worse" only in regards to increased number of cases. I haven't heard any indication that infections are more severe with this new strain. It's just that it's mutated enough that even vaccinated people are susceptible to reinfection.
All of this essentially means that Covid will be with us for a long time just like the flu, which also mutates and requires frequent vaccine boosters. We've been expecting Covid to settle into a similar seasonal pattern as the flu and RSV, but so far it's stubbornly refusing to do so.
And some experts think that Covid reinfection will decrease with successive generations who are exposed in young childhood until SARS-CoV-2 becomes just another nothingburger childhood viral illness like the other four or so endemic human coronaviruses.
EDIT: Successive generations OF HUMANS not of the virus. I think maybe that wasn't clear. As in like, in 100 years enough people might have been exposed to SARS-COV-2 in early childhood that it starts to be just another one of our endemic childhood coronaviruses.
Current generation of humans remains fucked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And some experts think that Covid reinfection will decrease with successive generations who are exposed in young childhood until SARS-CoV-2 becomes just another nothingburger childhood viral illness like the other four or so endemic human coronaviruses.
That seems to be a rather dangerous gamble considering the severe side effects and risks of successive reinfections.
Here's a whole article written about the new variant BA.2.86: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-covid-variant-ba286-2023-what-to-know-experts/
I'm curious as well
BA.2.86's mutations include changes at key parts of the virus that could help the variant dodge the body's immune defenses from prior infections or vaccinations.
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-covid-variant-ba286-2023-what-to-know-experts/
I would also comment that a lot of this is probably a facility-specific artifact. The Massachusetts hospital where I work had a similar Covid outbreak among staff about a month ago, and we started masking up again as a result. It didn't get any worse and we're already back to not masking routinely.
Employees share breakrooms, computer stations, and often socialize together outside work. But the overall Massachusetts data like the Boston wastewater testing doesn't look like any major outbreak is happening: https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
But a big hospital like UMass or MGH has a problem and it makes the news ¯\_(ツ)_/¯