COVID is rising, but some are cutting corners on safety. Is it making things worse?

COVID is continuing to rise this summer , and its spread is being aided by people who are still going to work or traveling while sick. “Certainly, people are trying to get back to whatever life was like before the pandemic,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

“We’re in a different place than we were before. ..

. However, good common sense shouldn’t go out the window.” While COVID is less severe for most people than during the first years of the pandemic — thanks to immunizations and past infections — and guidance about how to stay safe has become less stringent, doctors say it’s still important for people who are sick to avoid putting others at risk.

A new team of subvariants, called FLiRT , is estimated to be 20% more transmissible than last winter’s dominant variant, JN.1 . And they’re increasingly dominating the nation; for the two-week period that ended July 6, an estimated 70.

5% of COVID specimens nationwide were of the FLiRT subvariants — officially known as KP.3, KP.2 and KP.

1.1 — up from 54.9% a month earlier.

It’s clear Americans’ COVID worries have eased. A March Gallup poll found Americans are less worried about getting COVID, with 20% of U.S.

adult respondents saying they were “very or somewhat worried that they will contract COVID-19.” That’s similar to all-time lows in mid-2021 — amid initial excitement that the pandemic was fading after vaccines were intr.