PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia’s COVID-19 case counts have steadily risen since the end of the city’s indoor mask mandate, but hospitalizations and deaths have not followed suit, a striking change to a pandemic-long pattern of infections leading to serious illness.
Just over two weeks ago, city Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole explained she was ending a new mandate after just four days in response to low hospitalization rates. The data since then have shown hospitalization rates have not gone up in lockstep with cases, not just in Philadelphia but nationally.
“If you think about it compared to two years ago when the original COVID strains came, it was a completely naive population,” said John Zurlo, chief of Jefferson Health’s infectious diseases division, referring to the fact that nobody had ever encountered this virus.
