By BOB­BY CAINA CAL­VAN and STEVE LeBLANC-As­so­ci­at­ed Press 

NEW YORK (AP) — An in­crease in COVID-19 in­fec­tions around the U.S. has sent more cities in­to new high-risk cat­e­gories that are sup­posed to trig­ger in­door mask wear­ing, but much of the coun­try is stop­ping short of bring­ing back re­stric­tions amid deep pan­dem­ic fa­tigue. 

For weeks, much of up­state New York has been in the high-alert or­ange zone, a Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion des­ig­na­tion that re­flects se­ri­ous com­mu­ni­ty spread. The CDC urges peo­ple to mask up in in­door pub­lic places, in­clud­ing schools, re­gard­less of vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus. But few, if any, lo­cal ju­ris­dic­tions in the re­gion brought back a mask re­quire­ment de­spite ris­ing case counts. 

In New York City, cas­es are again ris­ing and this week crossed the city’s thresh­old for “medi­um risk,” in­di­cat­ing the widen­ing spread of the sub­vari­ant knowns as BA.2 that has swept the state’s north­ern reach­es. But there ap­pears to be lit­tle ap­petite from May­or Er­ic Adams to do an about face just a few months af­ter al­low­ing res­i­dents to shed masks and put away vac­ci­na­tion cards that were once re­quired to en­ter restau­rants and con­cert halls. Adams has said the city could piv­ot and reim­pose man­dates but has stressed that he wants to keep the city open. 

“I don’t an­tic­i­pate many places, if any, go­ing back to mask man­dates un­less we see over­flow­ing hos­pi­tals — that’s what would dri­ve mask man­dates,” said Pro­fes­sor David Larsen, a pub­lic health ex­pert at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty in up­state New York, whose own coun­ty is cur­rent­ly an or­ange zone. 

“Peo­ple are still dy­ing, but not in the same num­bers,” he said. 

Na­tion­al­ly, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions are up slight­ly but still as low as any point in the pan­dem­ic. Deaths have steadi­ly de­creased in the last three months to near­ly the low­est num­bers. 

The mut­ed re­sponse re­flects the ex­haus­tion of the coun­try af­ter two years of re­stric­tions and the new chal­lenges that health lead­ers are fac­ing at this phase of the pan­dem­ic. 

An abun­dance of at-home virus test kits has led to a steep un­der­count of COVID-19 cas­es that were once an im­por­tant bench­mark. Re­searchers es­ti­mate that more than 60% of the coun­try was in­fect­ed with the virus dur­ing the omi­cron surge, bring­ing high lev­els of pro­tec­tion on top of the tens of mil­lions of vac­ci­na­tions. Hos­pi­tal­iza­tions have in­creased but on­ly slight­ly. 

“If a mask man­date were re­in­stat­ed right this minute, I don’t think it’d be very suc­cess­ful,” said Jim Kearns, a video­g­ra­ph­er at the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York in Os­wego, an­oth­er up­state New York com­mu­ni­ty in the CDC’s or­ange zone. 

“I think a lot of peo­ple are just over it,” he said. “If I saw death rates and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions go­ing up in crazy num­bers, and if I felt that there was a dan­ger to me and my fam­i­ly, I would put it on in a heart­beat. But it has been a long two years.” 

In Boston, even as COVID-19 cas­es be­gan to tick up again, there’s been lit­tle dri­ve to reim­pose the in­door mask man­date city of­fi­cials large­ly lift­ed two months ago. Boston still re­quires masks in schools and on school bus­es. A statewide mask man­date was lift­ed for schools at the end of Feb­ru­ary. 

The city is now fo­cused on what Boston May­or Michelle Wu has de­scribed as re­cov­ery ef­forts, in­clud­ing at­tract­ing work­ers and vis­i­tors back to the city’s down­town. Health of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to urge cau­tion. Dur­ing April’s run­ning of the Boston Marathon, which drew tens of thou­sands of com­peti­tors, race or­ga­niz­ers and city of­fi­cials rec­om­mend­ed run­ners take steps to stop the spread of the virus by get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed, test­ed for COVID-19 and not ac­cept­ing wa­ter from spec­ta­tors. 

In Maine, there have been few ef­forts to re­in­state COVID-19 pre­cau­tions, even af­ter De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Janet Mills test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at the end of April. The 74-year-old, who had re­ceived a sec­ond boost­er, said she be­lieves that’s “one of the rea­sons why I am still feel­ing well” and en­cour­aged oth­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed. 

One of the most jar­ring re­ac­tions came in Philadel­phia, which last month aban­doned its in­door mask man­date just days af­ter be­com­ing the first U.S. me­trop­o­lis to reim­pose com­pul­so­ry mask­ing in re­sponse to an in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions. 

City of­fi­cials, who had said they want­ed to head off a new wave of in­fec­tions, abrupt­ly back­tracked af­ter what they said was an un­ex­pect­ed drop in the num­ber of peo­ple in the hos­pi­tal and a lev­el­ing-off of new in­fec­tions. The turn­about came amid ris­ing op­po­si­tion to the re­in­state­ment, but city of­fi­cials said the de­ci­sion was about da­ta, not pol­i­tics. 

In­ac­tion by cities comes af­ter a fed­er­al judge in Flori­da last month struck down a na­tion­al mask man­date for trav­el­ers on planes, trains and bus­es. The CDC still urges peo­ple to wear face cov­er­ings but the Trans­porta­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion said it would stop en­forc­ing mask man­dates at air­ports and on flights, even as the White House said it would ap­peal the rul­ing. 

In March, Ver­mont’s largest city, Burling­ton, end­ed its in­door mask man­date fol­low­ing a drop in COVID-19 cas­es. Burling­ton was one of more than two dozen Ver­mont com­mu­ni­ties that re­quired mask­ing af­ter the Leg­is­la­ture in No­vem­ber gave towns and cities the au­thor­i­ty to do that. Even as the masks came off, COVID made a re­turn in the state. 

Half of Ver­mont’s 14 coun­ties have now been rat­ed as hav­ing high com­mu­ni­ty lev­els of COVID-19, ac­cord­ing to the CDC. The rank­ings are based on a hand­ful of fac­tors, in­clud­ing new hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions for the virus. 

Chica­go’s in­fec­tion rate is al­so ris­ing, even though like in most places hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths re­main low. 

But the in­creas­ing num­ber of in­fec­tions caused enough con­cern that the school dis­trict sent a let­ter to par­ents alert­ing them to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that with the rise, Cook Coun­ty, which in­cludes Chica­go, “may be mov­ing from ‘low risk’ to a ‘mod­er­ate risk’ cat­e­go­ry in the com­ing days.” 

The let­ter did not say if the school dis­trict could again re­quire stu­dents and staffers to wear masks or re­turn to re­mote learn­ing. 

AP writer Don Bab­win in Chica­go and Michelle L. Price in New York con­tributed to this re­port. LeBlanc re­port­ed from Boston.