The phone of infectious diseases expert Dr. Thomas Russo has been a little busier recently as he has heard of more people testing positive for Covid-19.
“I get a lot more calls and a lot more people telling me, ‘I’m positive. What am I going to do?’” said Russo, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “I know a lot more people now that are positive over the last, certainly, month or so.”
State data show that positive tests and hospitalizations have been ticking up – a “Covid creep,” as Russo called it – since around mid-July in a Western New York area that includes Erie, Niagara, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua and Allegany counties. Still, figures remain low compared with prior years and, crucially, fewer people are getting severely sick from Covid-19.
“Let’s hope it remains a creep, and not a wave,” Russo said.
Health care providers and experts are paying close attention to what comes next, especially as Western New York saw balmy summer-like high temperatures last week that have now descended to a touch above 50 degrees, meaning we are now entering the more typical respiratory virus season and all the indoor gatherings that come amid the colder months.
Some hospitals have already taken steps. Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is now requiring masks in its hospital and outpatient clinical areas “due to increasing Covid-19 infection rates and in anticipation of cold and flu season,” the cancer center said on its website Sept. 28.
“We’re taking proactive steps to protect our patients, staff and visitors as we approach the winter months, when cases have trended higher,” Roswell Park said in a statement.
Other area hospitals are in wait-and-see mode, though masking in some units with high-risk patients never went away, even as cases dipped.
The state reported 122 positive tests in Western New York on Oct. 3, a…
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