On Wednesday, the New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan told WABC TV that mask mandates had resumed at all 11 of the city’s public hospitals, 30 health centers, and five long-term care facilities.

New Delhi: Amid the spike in COVID-19, seasonal flu and other respiratory illnesses in the United States, hospitals in four states have reinstated mask mandates. Healthcare facilities in New York, California, Illinois and Massachusetts have made masks mandatory among patients and providers.

On Wednesday, the New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan told WABC TV that mask mandates had resumed at all 11 of the city’s public hospitals, 30 health centers, and five long-term care facilities.

“What we don’t want is staffing shortages, right? When we saw the omicron wave in 2022, the biggest issues were not only people getting sick but that we had a lot of frontline health workers, they were out with COVID,” Vasan told WABC.

Covid in the US: Here are some of the key updates:

• The most recent weekly data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed there were over 29,000 hospitalizations from COVID across the US from Dec. 17-23, up more than 16% from the previous week.
• The CDC also reported over 14,700 flu hospitalizations in that same period.
• More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID, CDC figures show, a greater rate than most other wealthy countries.
• A conservative-dominated Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine-or-test mandate for companies, and a judge appointed by his Republican predecessor struck down his public transportation mask mandate.
• There was also deep resentment among those who did wear masks and felt their health was put in jeopardy by those who did not.

Rush University medical system in Chicago said on Tuesday that it was requiring “patients, visitors and staff to wear hospital-approved masks in some areas of the campus. They include clinical waiting areas and patient registration.”