It's time to upgrade your mask if you're using just a cloth covering because they don’t have to meet any kind of health standard, says Trish Greenhalgh, professor of primary health care services at the University of Oxford. “They can be really good or really terrible,” depending on what fabric is used.

NPR: To Block Omicron, Wear An N95 Or Other High-Filtration Mask With another coronavirus variant racing across the U.S., once again health authorities are urging people to mask up indoors. Yes, you've heard it all before. But given how contagious omicron is, experts say, it's seriously time to upgrade to an N95 or similar high-filtration respirator when you're in public indoor spaces. "Cloth masks are not going to cut it with omicron," says Linsey Marr, a researcher at Virginia Tech who studies how viruses transmit in the air. (Godoy, 12/23)

Bloomberg: Best Masks For Covid? Cloth Masks Could Be Bad Against Omicron, Expert Says Omicron is once again making people think twice before reaching out for their colorful, reusable cloth face masks. “They can be really good or really terrible,” depending on what fabric is used, said Trish Greenhalgh, professor of primary health care services at the University of Oxford. Double or triple-layer masks made of a mix of materials can be more effective, but most cloth coverings are just “fashion accessories,” according to Greenhalgh. (Anghel, 12/22)

In more news about the omicron variant —

CNN: How Long Should You Isolate If You Have Covid-19 But Are Vaccinated? There Is Some Debate  As the highly transmissible Omicron and Delta coronavirus variants continue to sweep across the United States, health officials warn that more people are expected to get infected -- even those who are fully vaccinated -- and they need to stay home and isolate themselves so they don't spread the virus to others. Anyone who has Covid-19 should isolate for 10 full days, according to current guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But this holiday season, there has been growing debate around the number of days to isolate if you test positive for Covid-19 but don't have symptoms and are fully vaccinated -- or, better yet, got a booster dose. (Howard, 12/22)

Bloomberg: Omicron Brings Risks To Pregnant Women Unvaccinated For Covid The omicron variant is heightening risks for this little-talked-about demographic: pregnant women. Left out of early vaccine trials and faced with confusing messages and misinformation on the dangers to their unborn children, a disproportionately large number of pregnant women have steered clear of Covid shots. About 75% of expectant mothers in the U.K. and about 65% in the U.S. remain unvaccinated, making them among the groups most at risk of getting infected and being exposed to severe forms of the disease as the fast-spreading omicron strain sweeps across the globe. (Ring, 12/23)

Stat: Regulator: Need For Omicron Vaccine Depends On Staying Power Of Variant Whether Americans will need additional vaccines specifically tailored to the rapidly spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus may depend on how long it circulates in the United States, a top regulator told STAT in an interview Wednesday. “If it turns out that Omicron is the new variant that actually things settle into, well then of course we will probably need an Omicron-specific vaccine,” said Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator. “On the other hand, if this is just a variant that’s passing through and we get [a new variant] in a month or two, we won’t need that.” (Florko, 12/22)

Bangor Daily News: Omicron Is Making Maine’s Shortage Of A Key COVID-19 Treatment Even Worse Maine does not currently have enough sotrovimab to treat scores of new omicron patients, Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Nirav Shah said Wednesday. In response, providers will likely restrict treatments to only the most at-risk patients, according to hospitals and epidemiologists. “I wish as a country we had more sotrovimab, because if the country did, then Maine would,” Shah said. The omicron variant was first detected in Maine last week as hospitals around the state were still contending with the effects of a surge in delta variant cases that has hammered hospitals and strained health care resources. The U.S. CDC has already said omicron is the dominant strain nationally and Maine health officials expect it to overtake the delta variant here within weeks. (Russell and Marino Jr., 12/23)

The Texas Tribune: Omicron May Hit Low-Income, Uninsured Texans Hardest  So much of the last two years has felt surreal for the staff at Centro De Salud Familiar La Fe, a federally qualified health center in El Paso. Seemingly overnight, the women’s health center became a coronavirus unit. They began offering COVID-19 testing, and then, as soon as they could, vaccine pop-ups. They’ve made public service announcements and gone door to door, encouraging people to get vaccinated. But despite the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, some things did not come as a surprise — like how hard it hit their low-income and uninsured clients. (Klibanoff, 12/22)

Stat: A Biologist Weighs In On Omicron, Vaccines, And The CDC’s Variant Forecast What do the data so far tell us about Omicron and whether it causes milder disease than previous Covid-19 variants? What can we expect to see as Omicron infections crash up against the country’s health care system? Why do Omicron waves seem to decline so quickly after scaling such heights? We don’t know. So we asked Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, for his thoughts. (Branswell, 12/22)

The New York Times: The Flu Makes an Unwelcome Comeback as Omicron Surges The flu virus, which all but disappeared in early 2020, is once again circulating in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 2,500 cases from clinical tests nationwide for the week that ended Dec. 11. That number is typical for this time of year, but it also represents a level of cases that has not been seen since before the coronavirus pandemic. (12/22)

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