Philadelphia has become the first big city to reinstate its indoor face-mask mandate after COVID-19 cases rose more than 50% in 10 days, which the health commissioner, Cr. Cheryl Bettigole said is the threshold for the city’s guidelines on the matter. Health inspectors will start to enforce the mask mandate at city businesses starting April 18, the Associated Press reported. The U.S. is averaging 32,139 cases a day, according to a New York Times tracker, up 10% from two weeks ago as cases rise in about half the states again as the highly infectious BA.2 subvariant of omicron spreads. The country is averaging 15,083 hospitalizations a day, down 16% from two weeks ago, the lowest since the first weeks of the pandemic. The daily death toll has fallen below 600 to 522. U.S. consular officials have been told to leave Shanghai, where a strict lockdown is in force. On global basis, total cases rose above 499.7 million and total deaths are above 6.18 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, with the U.S. still leading the way with 80.4 million cases and 985,826 deaths.
Source: Marketwatch
