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:
- New hospital admissions with Covid-19 have decreased 10%, from 1,200 admissions per day during the week ending March 30 to 1,000 admissions per day during the week ending April 6.
- Test positivity has decreased 10%, from 3.8% of Covid-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending March 30 to 3.4% of tests during the week ending April 6.
- Healthcare visits for influenza-like illness have decreased 8% between the week ending March 30 and the week ending April 6, and these visits are now below the baseline for respiratory virus season.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 10% between the week ending March 30 and the week ending April 6, and the national wastewater viral activity level is low, per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 4% between April 6 and April 13 per Biobot Analytics.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 1% between April 1 and April 8, per WastewaterSCAN.
Following the trends of the last few weeks, national Covid-19 metrics continue to decrease across the board. Current lulls in disease spread still indicate thousands of people are getting infected daily, though, when compared to the true low points reported in earlier years when mass Covid-19 precautions were still common.
Wastewater surveillance data show a continuation of the same declines in SARS-CoV-2 levels nationwide reported for the last two months. Last week, I flagged a slight increase in the Northeast; this week, the trend for this region has leveled out into a plateau, though both Biobot Analytics and WastewaterSCAN report higher coronavirus levels in the Northeast than in the other three regions.
Hospitalizations and test positivity for Covid-19 similarly continue to decline. The CDC also reports decreases in the flu and other respiratory viruses: as of April 6, healthcare visits for influenza-like illness have declined below the CDC’s threshold for respiratory virus season, 2.9% of all weekly visits. In other words, we’ve officially reached the end of the season for flu and other respiratory viruses.
The CDC’s wastewater surveillance program has labeled current SARS-CoV-2 activity levels as low, both nationally and in a majority of states. However, when we look at Biobot’s dashboard — which offers a longer period of consistent data collection — it’s clear that current viral levels are actually several times higher than the true lows we experienced in the springs and summers of 2020 and 2021, when precautions like masking, testing, and avoiding crowded gatherings were much more common.
Thanks to widespread declines in those safety measures due to government abandonment of Covid-19 policies, it seems unlikely we will get true lows in virus spread anytime soon. The virus’ continued evolution doesn’t help, either. Newer strains, mutated from the JN.1 lineage that dominated this past winter’s surge, are slowly growing in the U.S. and globally, and are likely to have an impact on transmission as we head into summer.
I often aim to remind readers that, with risks of hospitalization or death lowered by Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, Long Covid is now the most common severe outcome of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. The Kaiser Family Foundation highlighted this in a recent report, based on data from an ongoing CDC and Census survey: “However, as the nation moves further from the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of Long Covid remain steady and 7% of all adults—roughly 17 million people—reported currently having Long Covid in March 2024,” the report’s authors wrote.
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