Some people who have caught the COVID-19 strain nicknamed “razor blade throat” report an unusually painful sore throat.
“Basically the back of their throat is all irritated, and when they're trying to swallow something it feels like what's been described as shards of glass,” said Dr. Davey Smith, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego Health.
It’s part of a COVID-19 variant called Nimbus, which now made up about 37% of cases nationwide at the beginning of the month. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projections show the variant becoming a dominant strain soon.
In San Diego County, health officials reported 317 COVID-19 cases for the week ending June 7, a decrease from the week before. But hospitalizations increased during the same time period from 35 to 54.
“People who are at high risk for COVID still are getting hospitalized. People who are taking various kinds of chemotherapy, people who are immunosuppressed, or the very elderly,” Smith said.
Public concern, however, continues to decline. About 80% of Americans rarely or never wear masks in public spaces and more than half said COVID-19 is no longer something they worry much about, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
“I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of talking about it, but it's still a thing, so it doesn't mean that we can just totally ignore it anymore,” Smith said.
COVID-19 is now part of a growing seasonal mix of respiratory viruses, including RSV and the flu, he said. That means symptoms like fever, chills, cough, or a severe sore throat should prompt people to test for COVID-19, even if they assume it’s just a cold.
The rise of the new variant also comes as the federal government recently updated its vaccine guidance. Under the latest recommendations, most healthy adults under 65 are no longer advised to get routine COVID-19 boosters.
Smith questioned how the shift in policy might affect outcomes for vulnerable populations.
“The question that I have around the guidelines is who's going to get really sick and have to be in the hospital, and who will ultimately die of the infection? Will these guidelines change any of that, or make it worse, or make it better,” he said.
Time will tell, he said.
