Do hospital masks mean Covid is making a comeback?

Face mask rules have been reintroduced at acute hospitals in Worcestershire

Some hospitals have reintroduced mask wearing after a spike in patients being admitted with Covid-19, so should we be worried the virus is making a comeback?

Since Monday, patients, visitors and staff are required to wear masks in clinical areas at the Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford.

In Worcestershire, the Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said the measure was necessary "to protect patients, their loved ones and hospital staff from risk of infection" .

They are currently treating 65 patients with Covid-19, the highest number since December 2023. Patients are also in hospital for longer so that would indicate they are sicker too.

In Staffordshire, there are 108 patients with the virus. At Royal Stoke Hospital two wards are currently full with Covid patients.

But it is difficult to tell if this is some sort of "summer Covid wave" because we are doing a lot less testing than we used to.

Most of the testing these days is done of hospital patients when they are admitted and yes, we are seeing a bit of an uptick, indeed it might be higher than the numbers suggest as not all new patients are tested.

Part of life

But let's put these new cases in context.

With about 170 infected patients in the last few weeks in Staffordshire and Worcestershire that is a lot fewer than we saw at the height of the pandemic.

At the end of 2021 going in to 2022, we saw a peak in England of nearly 300,000 new cases a day and there are no signs we are even remotely close to a return to those sort of numbers.

As for what is driving this small rise in cases, well Covid-19 as a virus is constantly evolving and yes that means new variants. If you remember it was the Omicron variant that drove that huge peak of 300,000 cases.

Currently, we are seeing a descendent of that Omicron variant, JN1, dominating things and in fact, there are even newer mutations of JN1, that we are keeping an eye on collectively, called FliRT. (Flirt is an acronym that's to do with the locations of the mutations on the virus, if you are wondering.)

But, it is too early to tell if FliRT variants are driving this small increase in infection.

The truth is Covid-19 is now part of life. We will all be infected and re-infected over and over again.

For many of us, that is not likely to be a problem, but those that can, should keep getting boosted, and yes, in hospital mask wearing is something we might see more of now and again as infection rates peak.