Over the last six months, our blog has been a little strange, just like the world. We have always been a blog dedicated to healthy tips, tricks and recipes. It was meant to help your everyday life. It still is. It’s just that daily life has changed so much. We read your concerns on our Facebook posts; you’re worried about COVID-19. We want to keep you informed so you can help protect yourselves.

While the death toll has reached over 200,000 in America, we haven’t written about that. Focusing on that doesn’t help you make informed decisions about your actions. Instead, we want to share the news that a study has found that COVID-19 appears to have mutated to become more contagious than it was before. While it has not become more deadly, being more likely to catch it does put you at a higher risk of becoming ill.

Health officials had already been telling us to prepare for a hard and dangerous winter, so this news is distressing. A study that looked at 5,000 samples of the virus saw that it has been mutating in ways that make it potentially easier to catch but not more deadly. If you catch it, you still have the same risk level as before of becoming ill and needing to be hospitalized or even die. This means that our guard cannot come down. This may explain why the virus cases have been on the rise in many parts of the country. In fact, 20 states have seen a five percent rise in patients in the last two weeks.

Younger people are catching the virus at the fastest rate, possibly because of colleges and schools reopening. But, older people and people with medical concerns are at high risk of becoming seriously ill. It’s important to protect yourself against becoming ill. That means following all the steps that have been laid out: masks, hand washing, not touching your face and social distancing. Doctors are also strongly recommending flu shots. While a flu shot cannot protect you against COVID-19, it can save your immune system from having to work overtime and fight off two viruses at once.

If the virus continues to mutate, the precautions we are taking may not be enough; that is why it is so important to act now. The more we can protect and distance ourselves, the better. People who usually wear contacts may wish to switch to glasses as folks who wear glasses are five times less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19. If you have been a little lax about protective measures, you may want to revaluate your actions and recommit to following safety precautions.

The pandemic has been dragging on for months. It’s hard to stay vigilant for months and months on end. We all have fatigue. At first, we wanted to go to gatherings. Now, we just want to go to the store without feeling nervous! Until we have an effective, safe vaccine, the best thing we can do is protect ourselves and loved ones by staying up to date on the best ways to avoid infection.