Summer vacation and gathering tips for our third summer of the COVID-19 pandemic
Summer is in full swing! We’ve compiled a few tips to help you feel even more confident in your gathering and travel plans this year.
Can we return to summers as we knew them?
Right now, many of us are in that sweet, relaxing, vacation-taking time between Memorial Day and Labor Day. People are gathering, enjoying the outdoors and traveling. Many restrictions on daily life have lifted, but some may still be looking for ways to get tested for COVID-19 before being in a crowd or on a plane.
The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and testing remain the strongest tools we have to increase our confidence and make a return to normal activities as safe as possible. As new variants continue to emerge, PCR testing remains the gold standard to detect COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were approximately 109,000 daily new cases of COVID-19 in May of this year, bringing the total number of cases to nearly 88 million.
While these numbers reflect a better scenario than a year ago—with higher vaccinations rates and boosters, more treatments and fewer cases of severe illness and hospitalizations—and most certainly a better scenario than two years ago, they also highlight that we’re not out of the woods yet.