Thirty states reported more COVID-19 cases in the latest week than in the week before, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The continuing surge of infections has been attributed to BA.5, the newest sub-variant, which accounts for 53.6 percent of new cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which is calling it the dominant COVID strain in the U.S.
That has also led to a rise in hospitalizations, with hospitals in 18 states reporting more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier.
Twenty-three states had more patients in intensive care beds, and 15 states reported more deaths than a week earlier.
Health experts agree that outdoor activities are still much safer than indoors, since viral aerosols don’t have a chance to accumulate in the air.
But with the most transmissible variants yet, chances are you have less protection in certain outdoor situations.
“Being at parks and outdoor sporting events is still what we should turn to,” said Dr. Anne Liu, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford. “But if you are in a dense crowd or in an outdoor space that has been modified to look like an indoor space, then the risk becomes higher.”
Physicians also caution against working through a COVID-19 infection, saying that rest is an important part of weathering the disease.
Plugging away from home is better than putting others at risk of getting infected, but it can still strain the immune system, worsening the toll of a COVID infection, experts say.