COVID-19 cases climb as people gather without masks

The sun is calling people outside, and doctors say many of them are forgetting to wear their masks, according to health leaders.

“Look, the weather got nice, when things look better people tend to forget that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic,” said Dr. Umair Shah, Washington Secretary of Health.

The state says cases are climbing, creating a fourth wave. Disease levels are back to where they were in November.

“We cannot vaccinate our way out of increasing disease levels. We are going to have to use the tools that are available to all of us to slow the spread,” said Deputy Health Secretary Lacy Fehrenbach.

According to the Department of Health, cases are rising in children as young as 10, through adults up to 59 years old. They say variants are fueling the spread. The B.1.1.7 variant, first discovered in the U.K., has taken over as the predominant variant in the state.

At this point in Washington, 25% of the population is fully vaccinated.

In Seattle at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Dr. Ali Mokdad says seasonality and warmer weather will help cases drop.

“In a couple of weeks we’re going to feel very good, cases are going to start coming down. It will be a very close to normal summer. Winter is a totally different story,” said Dr. Mokdad.

“We cannot reach herd immunity before winter,” he said. Dr. Mokdad says 80-85% of the population would need to be vaccinated and to reach that percentage, children must be vaccinated too. He also said they are studying the impacts of the variants.

Cox Media Group