INDIANA – Health officials say it may be time to break out masks again to protect yourself from a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases.
There were about four new hospital admissions for every 100,000 people nationwide in the week ending August 12, which is considered low according to CDC thresholds. But 85 counties in the US were in the medium threshold range, and about a quarter of those counties were in Florida.
The growing number of hospitalizations has also triggered concern among medical professionals who say high-risk groups should increase precautions due to the new highly mutated variant, BA.2.86.
This comes as the US government announced Tuesday it has awarded more than $1.4 billion to kick-start the development of new vaccines and therapies to prevent another spike in COVID-19 cases.
