The US is in what could end up being the biggest Covid wave of the summer, with no end in sight.
“If we just talk about infections, this will probably end up being the biggest summer surge we’ve had,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and former White House Covid-19 response coordinator. . . “It’s still not as big as winter waves, but it’s starting to get closer.”
It’s not just in the USA. There has been a worldwide rise in infections in recent weeks, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid technical lead at the World Health Organization. in one briefing this week. The proportion of positive Covid tests in Europe is over 20%, with wastewater data suggesting the number of cases could be two to 20 times higher than reported, Van Kerkhove said.
The best way to estimate how much virus the US is facing is wastewater data from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionbecause many people only get tested at home when they get sick, if they get tested at all.
Nationally, the CDC tracker lists Covid levels as “high,” with the western US, including Texas and California, having some of the highest levels of virus. Eastern states such as Florida and North Carolina also report very high levels of virus in the community.
Wastewater cannot identify how many cases occur per day; coronavirus levels are much higher across the country than they were last year.
This year’s summer surge also started earlier than last year, Jha said. The number of cases began to rise in early June, compared to July and August 2023.
Jha expects this wave to peak in the coming weeks, with the number of cases greatly decreasing around September – around the time the updated report Covid vaccines targeting the KP.2 straindescendant of the JN.1 variant, should be available.
The new vaccines are expected to receive final approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks. At that point, the CDC will recommend who should be first in line for the shots.
Jha said that to protect against a winter wave, you should try to get vaccinated as early as possible in October, although any time before Thanksgiving is suitable.
Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, didn’t expect the summer surges to be so pronounced four years after Covid began.
“I and many other virologists thought we would probably see summer surges for maybe another year or two, but we didn’t expect them to increase significantly,” he said. “We thought they would continue to be smaller and smaller over time as we transitioned to what we hope will be just one increase in Covid cases per year in the winter.”
THE latest CDC fore has a mix of variants currently in circulation, including KP.3, KP.3.1.1 and KP.2.3, descendants of JN.1 version of the virus that was circulating earlier this year. Some scientists collectively refer to the variants as “FLiRT” – a reference to their genetic changes – and they are believed to be some of the most contagious yet.
The factors behind the current spread are likely the more transmissible variants, combined with people spending more time indoors because of the warm weather, he said.
“Beyond that, there’s not much we can point to to say that this is what’s driving this summer surge,” Pekosz said.
For the most part, Covid hospitalizations this year have remained lower than last year. In last summer months, there was a slight increase, with levels higher than last year. Fortunately, deaths due to Covid remain at an all-time low.
“We are seeing people being admitted and testing positive for Covid, but serious lung complications from Covid-19 are extremely rare,” said Dr. Michael Phillips, chief epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health hospital in New York City. “Where we see the dramatic increase in numbers is in the people who are coming into our [emergency department] or people who arrive at our clinics with a positive test and go home.”
NYU Langone Health’s test positivity rate, or the proportion of patients with symptoms who test positive for Covid, is 12%, a sixfold increase in just the last few months.
Last month it had 1,357 positive tests, more than double the number in July 2023, when it had 562 positive tests. Just 12 of last month’s Covid patients were admitted to hospital for Covid-related illnesses.
“Our hospitalization rates have dropped, so even though we are testing and seeing more [Covid]appears to have less impact on our susceptible populations,” Phillips said.
Jha said what will happen this winter is impossible to predict, but there could be a silver lining to a big summer surge.
“A big summer wave tends to lead to a slightly smaller winter wave and vice versa, just because there’s a little more immunity in the population,” he said.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
