Various public officials, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, announced they tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. While the named lawmakers both reported mild symptoms, the high-profile cases had some locals wondering how widespread COVID-19 is these days.

The impact COVID-19 has on personal health and healthcare systems in D.C. is currently low, according to the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention. The same is true of the Maryland and Virginia suburbs in the D.C. region. However, the CDC has reworked metrics to deemphasize case counts, as the Biden Administration seeks to usher in a new phase of the pandemic, one that’s potentially less disruptive.

However, case counts in D.C. are starting to climb, although not dramatically. DC Health Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt told reporters on Thursday that D.C. has seen a “small uptick” in cases the last two weeks. Her department’s website reports that the weekly case rate roughly doubled between March 13 and 27. She said the District is seeing more cases on a weekly basis, but most do not appear to require medical treatment. “We still have very low rates of hospitalizations due to COVID-19,” she said in a press call.

There are various factors that could explain the recent increase, Nesbitt said. The highly-contagious omicron subvariant, BA.2, now dominates D.C, accounting for 61% of the circulating virus. Also, more people are getting tested  — there’s a 37% increase citywide as of last week. (Nesbitt advised people to get tested if they are unsure whether their symptoms are COVID-19, or related to seasonal allergies; The D.C. government has enough tests and offers free PCR and rapid options at several public libraries.)

Dr. Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, warned it’ll be difficult to determine whether cases spike because of BA.2 or, because local governments and businesses have eased COVID-19 measures. “You expect to see a small bump in cases just because we’re no longer doing the things that kept infections down,” he told DCist/WAMU late last month. Fortunately, he said, D.C. is not seeing cases exponentially increase as the city had with BA.1, the original omicron variant.

Nesbitt said DC Health has no imminent plans to recommend or require masking indoors because, she says, community levels are still substantially low. “With that being said, we’ve always been very clear that institutions, businesses, workplaces, maintain the right to have their own requirements,” she said. “Our residents always maintain the right again to do indoor masking as it makes sense for them.” (There’s debate among experts on how effective one-way masking is.)

Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University both decided to return indoor mask requirements after noticing an increase in cases among students. “Thankfully, with the vast majority of our community up to date on vaccination, we are not seeing cases involving severe illness,” said Georgetown’s Chief Public Health Officer, Ranit Mishori.

There are also anecdotal reports of a significant number of cases on Capitol Hill. While case rates are tracked by the Office of the Attending Physician, the House Committee on House Administration press secretary tells DCist/WAMU via email that case data is not made public. The Office of the Attending Physician does participate in D.C.’s contract tracing program, she added. DC Health has previously said the agency only traces high-risk cases.

DC Health stopped publicly reporting cases on a daily basis in early March, and the director suggested they’re not interested in changing this decision yet. “At this phase in our pandemic, the pace at which we are making policy decisions and the pace at which the public needs information in order to make decisions about what’s best for them in their household suggests that it’s appropriate for us to report on a weekly basis,” said Nesbitt. 

The local health department sends data to the federal government, so trackers like the Washington Post’s can update theirs. Residents seeking daily updates to determine risk have had to rely on trackers like those. As of April 7, the Post says D.C. has a higher seven-day average case rate compared to the U.S. But cases are relatively low (averaging 144 as of April 7, per the Post) especially compared to the omicron surge of last winter when D.C. reported over 2,000 daily cases. (The reported cases are imperfect measurements because people are not testing as frequently, and not everyone submits at-home results to the government for record keeping.)

Being able to call a case of COVID-19 mild or manageable, as various politicians have, is a privilege, said public health professor at University of Maryland Neil J. Sehgal. The risk of serious complications from COVID-19 is high for people who are immunocompromised or elderly. Then there are people who are unable to quarantine either because they can’t take time off work, or they live in crowded, small homes. “What we’ve done is we’ve made things more difficult for the worse off because it was uncomfortable for people to continue with protections that they didn’t see as relevant for them,” Sehgal tells DCist/WAMU.

In an interview with DCist/WAMU, DC Health Bureau Chief Asad Bandealy stressed the need for people to get boosted amid rising cases. While 82% of the D.C. population is fully vaccinated according to the CDC, only 38% of residents 12 and over are boosted. And 58% of the total population over 65 is boosted.  “We already have seen that the BA.2 variant is the most common variant here in D.C. and nationwide, and we’re seeing the uptick in cases beginning. There’s really no time to waste if people haven’t been boosted, now’s the time.”