KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On the same day the CDC approves new COVID-19 booster shots for everyone above the age of 6 months, hospital leaders say they are seeing a concerning rise in case numbers.

“We fear a lot of complacency at this point,” Dr. Todd Shaffer, a family physician at University Health said.

This warning more than three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began ravaging communities across the country.

“Over the last month or so we’ve actually continued to see increased amounts of COVID. This last week we’ve actually got some patients with respiratory COVID, much like what we had before,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer keyed in on two things. One, they’re seeing a variety of symptoms and that the risk of serious illness or death for those with underlying health issues still exists.

This increase in cases impacting inpatient and outpatients and some of the health care providers themselves are now becoming infected with COVID.

Shaffer says some doctors including himself are voluntarily wearing masks again due to the influx.

“I have one employee that almost died from it. I guess – he was in the hospital,” Derrick Conn the general manager of a Kansas City metro Jiffy Lube said.

Conn says they were forced to close their shop Monday for a few hours because so many employees were out with COVID, while multiple others didn’t want to return until the conditions are safe again.

“COVID is not over, it is still alive and well and people can still get it,” Conn said.

Doctors do want to stress that we are nowhere close to where we were in 2020, or even 2021 when we saw a lot of those surges.

But they do want to get ahead as to prevent another surge and Shaffer says don’t get complacent, keep up with all those important sanitizing tips and get that booster.