Maybe you know a few people who tested positive this summer and had to postpone or even cancel their summer vacation. Maybe you’ve felt a bit sick yourself and scrambled to find an at-home test to make sure it wasn’t COVID. But for most of us, COVID is largely a thing of the past, as we gather again, mask-free and indoors, enjoying our social gatherings and planning our future get-togethers. 

And there is good news to celebrate about the declining occurrence of COVID in the United States. In 2020, COVID ranked 3rd as the cause of death in the US, right behind heart disease and cancer. Today, it ranks 10th, and in 2023, COVID was the underlying or contributing factor to about 76,000 deaths, which was a 68.9% decrease from the number of COVID deaths in 2022. However, don’t start breaking out the champagne and hurling the confetti yet, because this summer, there’s been an unexpected surge in COVID cases, both in the United States and across the world. Cases across the United States, but particularly in the South and Southeast, are growing, with COVID detection in wastewater at “very high levels.” Hospitalizations have risen, as have deaths, and COVID was even a factor in the Paris Olympics which just concluded. While we’re not tracking, testing, or reporting COVID cases the way we used to, it’s clear that there’s been a COVID surge in at least 84 countries this summer, with Russia reporting the highest number of cases and the US reporting the most COVID deaths. Reports from US hospital emergency rooms this summer document that the highest rates of COVID cases have been among children 11 years old and younger, closely followed by adults aged 75 and older. As a recent article in Salon warned, “We think we’ve won against this virus and we haven’t.”

In fact, NPR recently reported that COVID is now considered endemic throughout the world, meaning COVID is here to stay and will be with us indefinitely. That means for high-risk individuals, which includes adults over 65, many of whom have multiple underlying chronic diseases or are immune compromised, the need to take precautions and continue vaccinations is ever-present. A few hundred people continue to die each week from COVID and the majority of those deaths are among older adults. While most people have a certain level of immunity either from previously having had COVID or from prior vaccinations (which means the risk of serious illness from COVID has lessened), the current variants of COVID have been adept at evolving and spreading and the risk of becoming sick is definitely still present. And we now have a study reporting that COVID appears to be a factor in new cases of cognitive decline. As was described in a recent article in Time, research has linked COVID to a number of long-lasting changes to the brain, including memory loss, mental fatigue, and brain fog. While more data is needed, it appears that COVID may be creating a higher risk of developing dementia in older adults along with accelerating decline in those adults who already have dementia.

So at this point, what can you do to continue to protect yourself? First and foremost, the advice continues to be that everyone, but especially those at increased risk, should be up to date with vaccinations and take advantage of new vaccinations that will be coming out this Fall. If you’re unsure of whether you should go for a booster now, while cases are surging, or wait until the Fall when a new booster more closely tied to the current variants will be released, it all depends upon your health history and profile, along with your risk aversiveness. As for masking, anyone at risk, and especially indoors, may want to continue to wear a surgical or KN95 mask, as new research from Norway has confirmed that wearing a surgical mask in public places can significantly reduce your risk of infection.  Furthermore, anyone who tests positive doesn’t necessarily need to isolate for 5 days anymore but should remain separate from others until symptoms subside and fever has disappeared for at least 24 hours without the use of any fever-reducing medication. However, in the days after you end your isolation, it is still recommended that you practice social distancing, continue testing, and wear a mask. You never know the risk of someone whom you may expose to COVID. As the saying goes, “Prepare and prevent, don’t repair and repent.”