In the wake of a recent spike in new Covid cases, the city of Philadelphia announced that it will reimpose an indoor mask mandate on April 18. The city is reinstating the mask mandate a little more than a month after lifting it.
Philadelphia will be the first major U.S. city to do so. “This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic,” Philadelphia’s health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said in a news conference Monday.
After a long stint of fall in cases, coronavirus infections have increased by 10 percent in the last fortnight, the New York Times reported. The current weekly average is 33021.
The United States on Monday recorded 49391 new Covid cases and 433 deaths due to coronavirus infection.
Massachusetts reported the most number of cases – 4267 – while California reported most casualties – 46.
Only 14,940 patients are remaining in the country’s hospitals for treatment for the viral disease. Hospital admissions reduced by 17 percent in two weeks.
There is also a concurrent reduction in the number of patients admitted in intensive care units – 26 percent within a fortnight. I.C.U. admissions dropped to 2128.
79,959,456 people have so far recovered from the disease, the Worldometer tally shows.
As per the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 218,430,663 Americans, or 65.8 percent of the eligible population, have been administered both doses of Covid vaccine so far. This includes 89.5 percent of people above 65.
45.2 percent of the eligible population, or 98,783,608 people, have already received a booster dose that is recommended to provide additional protection from the killer virus.
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