After labouring for two years to help save COVID-19 patients, dozens of nurses had their hands blessed during a ceremony marking National Nurses Week.

The ritual of anointing the nurses' hands with oil was intended to recognize their sacrifices during the pandemic at Providence St Joseph Hospital in Orange, California.

"What we are doing today is stopping for a minute to recognize and appreciate those who go out of their way to take care of others," said Father Patrick Okonkwo, a hospital chaplain who performed the symbolic Catholic ceremony.

"Our labor is signified with the works of our hands. So the blessing of the hands is a reminder that everything we do is about helping others."

Nurse manager Paul Kariuki was one of many nurses who received the blessing from Okonkwo.

"This is a really wonderful opportunity to actually be out and we can actually take the mask off and be able to touch each other," said Kariuki, who oversaw a surgery ward turned into a COVID unit during the first days of the pandemic. "It's really a blessing we've come so far for the last two years."

(Chaplain Bill O'Brien, furthest, and Father Patrick Okonkwo perform a Blessing of the Hands at Providence St Joseph Hospital. – AP)

Nearby, intensive care unit nurse coordinator Patsy Brandenburger painfully recalled the worst days of the pandemic, when the hospital was filled with hundreds of patients- dozens on ventilators- to now with the hospital having just seven COVID-19 patients.

"The amount of patients we saw that passed away in the ICU was so, so, so hard. And just the families that couldn't be there with them was extremely hard on all of us," Brandenburger said fighting away tears.

But Brandenburger was elated to feel the worst days had passed and to now receive a chaplain's blessing.

"Today is a fabulous day," said Brandenburger.

"To be able to have them just actually touch your hands and bless you is just... I'm so fortunate."

It came as US COVID-19 cases are rising and the country approaches 1 million deaths in the pandemic.

It has led a smattering of school districts, particularly in the Northeast, to bring back mask mandates and recommendations for the first time since the Omicron winter surge ended.

The return of masking in schools is not nearly as widespread as earlier in the pandemic, particularly as the public's worries over the virus have ebbed. But districts in Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have brought masks back, with a few in Massachusetts also recommending them even as the school year enters its final weeks.

Maine's largest school district, in Portland, said this week masks would return, with Superintendent Xavier Botana saying that was the “safest course at this time” amid rising cases. Bangor, Maine, schools also brought back a universal mask requirement.

High schools in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and in Montclair, New Jersey, a commuter suburb of New York City, also announced a return to masking, albeit temporarily through this week. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most of the counties in the country considered to have “high” levels of COVID-19 are in the Northeast.

In parts of Massachusetts that have seen high levels of COVID-19 transmission, authorities are also recommending masks in schools.

Reported daily cases in the US are averaging 79,000, up 50 per cent over the past two weeks, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That's a fraction of where daily case counts stood earlier this year, when they topped 800,000.

However, current case counts are a vast undercount because of a major downturn in testing and the fact tests are being taken at home and not reported to health departments.

An influential modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle estimates that only 13 per cent of cases are being reported to health authorities in the US – which would mean an undercount of more than a half million new infections every day.

Despite the uptick in cases and the return to masking in a small number of schools, the response across the country has been largely subdued, reflecting the public's exhaustion after more than two years of restrictions.

Outside of schools, however, officials have shown little interest in returning to mask mandates.

Last month, Philadelphia abandoned its indoor mask mandate just days after becoming the first large American city to reimpose the requirement in response to an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.