Covid-19 is surging again around the United States in what experts deem as the variant the most transmissible of the pandemic thus far.

However, the way the US is responding to the surge is different this time, as public health authorities are holding back.

Chicago's top doctor said there was no reason for people to let the virus control their lives, even after Covid's warning level was raised to “high” last week. The state health director in Louisiana also described the situation as concerning, but not alarming. 

“We’re not going to be able to have infinite series of mandates forcing people to do this, that and the other,” the public health officer in King County, Wash., Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, said on Thursday, referring to the reimposition of the mask mandate.

The latest surge, driven by a spike of BA.5 subvariant cases in this country, has led hospitalizations to climb by 20% in the last two weeks.

Nonetheless, public health officials are sounding only quiet warnings amid a picture they hope has become different due to vaccines and rising immunity. While deaths are rising again too, even if modestly so far, local public health officials say they must also factor now in a reality that is obvious along the streets from Seattle to New York City: the new Covid wave is met by most Americans with shunning masks, a collective shrug, and a gathering of crowds indoors, ignoring the virus warnings of the past.

“I feel strongly that you can’t just kind of cry wolf all the time,” Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago health department, said, adding she will not consider another citywide mask mandate before seeing whether or not hospitals become strained.

“I want to save the requirements around masks or updating vaccine requirements for when there’s a significant change.”

Complicating the country’s understanding of this BA.5 wave is a lack of data. Information regarding the exact number of infections in the US stopped to be precise, especially after closing the public testing sites.

Experts, such as Dr. Joseph Kanter, Louisiana’s state health officer and medical director believe the outlines of a new wave are undeniable.

“You don’t have to count every raindrop to know it’s raining,” he said, adding, “And it’s pouring right now.”

The BA.5 subvariant in the US

The BA.5 subvariant, first detected in South Africa in January, spread to a number of European countries and was responsible for just 1% of cases in the US in mid-May. Today, it represents at least two-thirds of new cases in the country.

An assistant director for the health department in San Antonio, Anita Kurian, said that for six weeks in a row, the cases have been rising in the area. She added that the low number of deaths suggests that the country is entering a less lethal stage of the pandemic where treatments and vaccines have significantly improved survival chances.

“We are nowhere at the level where we were with the previous surges,” Kurian said.