Well it’s time to Break out the N95 in full form “The FliRT strains subvariants of the sometimes lethal Omnicron virus and they accounted for the majority of the COVID cases in the U.S. at the beginning of July 2024, one of them KP.3, was responsible for 36.9% of COVID infections in the United States.Kp.2 made up 24.4% and KP.1.1 accounted for 9.2% of cases.” ( K. Katella 11 Jul 2024 Yale Medicine).
CNN article “Covid-19’s back. Should you be worried”,(K. Hetter 16 Jul 2024) stated that the week ending Jul 6 there was a 23.5% increase in ER visits for Covid-19 compared to the previous week. Even the the Tour de France was affected. So what’s in store here? As a seasoned primary care physician, I have expected since late 2021 and early 2022 that COVID would continue in waves for an indefinite period of time. I personally have dawned an N-95 since 2020 in the ED and primary care clinics. So that should be a clue that we are not going back to pre-COVID life any time soon if not ever. Although not as accurate as the in hospital PCR tests BinaxNow at Walmart by Abbott is a very good test for in-home detection. Social media sites like Tik-ToK, Facebook and Twitter (X) have served their purpose in keeping up informed (whether positive or negative or truthful or false).
There is no “hazard pay” for working with public during this seemingly never-ending exposure to the coronavirus. Every shift performed, every time a clinic opens, every time EMS picks up a patient, every time a fireman responds to an emergency, everytime law enforcement gets “close and personal” with a suspect, and even when your friendly bank teller or cashier or server interacts with you they are taking a risk, a risk that comes with little monetary reward.
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