National Covid-19 trends, July 23 — The Sick Times
Here are the latest national Covid-19 trends, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and major wastewater surveillance providers:
- About 3 in every 100,000 people were hospitalized for Covid-19 during the week ending July 6. (Note that these are provisional data.)
- Covid-19 test positivity has increased 11%, from 11.4% of Covid-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending July 6 to 12.6% of tests during the week ending July 13.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 30% between the week ending July 6 and the week ending July 13, and the national wastewater viral activity level is “high,” per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 18% between the week of July 8 and the week of July 15, per Biobot Analytics.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 13% between July 6 and July 13, per WastewaterSCAN.
This summer’s Covid-19 surge is in full swing, with different wastewater data sources reporting high disease levels across the U.S. While hospitalization metrics are lower, this area of Covid-19 tracking is far less comprehensive than it was during earlier periods of the pandemic, making the data less reliable.
The CDC, Biobot Analytics, and WastewaterSCAN all agree that SARS-CoV-2 levels are high and rising in sewage across the U.S. According to multiple datasets, the country’s current average viral levels are at or higher than last summer’s peaks, at an earlier time than we reached those levels last year. And disease spread shows no signs of slowing. (For more details about these different datasets, see today’s explainer article.)
In previous weeks, I’ve noted that the West Coast — where this summer’s wave started back in May — was reporting a possible plateau in SARS-CoV-2 levels. However, the most recent updates from all three national wastewater data providers report continued increases in this region. Other regions are also on the rise, with the South in particular reporting accelerated disease spread in recent weeks.
The CDC’s state-by-state map of wastewater activity reports “very high” or “high” coronavirus levels in 36 states as of July 18, including all of the West and much of the South. Modeled estimates from the CDC’s forecasting center, which use hospitalization and wastewater data, similarly report that Covid-19 infections are “growing or likely growing” in 42 states and territories and are not declining in any states.
Hospitalizations, as reported by a network of 300 facilities sharing data with the CDC, are fairly low compared to past Covid-19 surges: about three hospitalizations per 100,000 people as of July 6, compared to a peak of eight per 100,000 last December. However, these data are much less comprehensive than the information we had access to when all hospitals were required to report to the CDC and facilities were testing all patients for Covid-19.
In addition, when pundits insist that Covid-19 is “mild” and this summer’s surge is “no big deal,” it’s important to remember that we do not have any real-time tracking of Long Covid. It will take months for people who got sick during this wave to start recognizing long-term symptoms — and many may never connect those symptoms to Covid-19 at all, due to a lack of testing and poor public health education.
This story was originally published at The Sick Times, an independent news site chronicling the Long Covid crisis. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here to get future Covid-19 updates as soon as they’re published, and donate here to support our original reporting.
