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 0.7 in every 100,000 people was hospitalized for Covid-19 during the week ending May 4, a 41% decrease from the week ending April 27. (Note that these are provisional data and less comprehensive than our prior hospitalization numbers.)
- Test positivity has increased 3%, from 3.0% of Covid-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending April 27 to 3.1% of tests during the week ending May 4.
- Healthcare visits for influenza-like illness have decreased 3% between the week ending April 27 and the week ending May 4, and these visits are below the baseline for respiratory virus season.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 6% between the week ending April 27 and the week ending May 4, and the national wastewater viral activity level is minimal, per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 4% between May 4 and May 11, per Biobot Analytics.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 7% between April 29 and May 6, per WastewaterSCAN.
Wastewater surveillance and testing data suggest that the U.S. might be at the very beginning of a summer surge in Covid-19 cases, driven by a perpetual lack of collective safety measures and the newer variant KP.2. Without safety measures or long-lasting vaccines, the country faces a wave of reinfections every few months.
While Covid-19 wastewater data from the CDC and WastewaterSCAN show continued plateaus in national SARS-CoV-2 levels, Biobot Analytics, which provides more recent updates than the other two dashboards, reports slight increases over the last two weeks: viral levels went up about 9% between April 27 and May 11. This is provisional data, meaning the trends could change with Biobot’s next update, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Our limited Covid-19 testing data also suggest a similar slight increase. Test positivity rates increased from 3% to 3.1% in the most recent week of the CDC’s data, based on a network of Covid-testing labs that report to the agency. Walgreens also reports an increase in the positivity rate for tests conducted at its pharmacies, from 14% to 15.3% between May 5 and May 12.
The CDC’s hospitalization data show that acute Covid-19 currently has a low impact on the healthcare system, but hospitalization metrics just became harder to follow as the CDC lost its ability to require hospitals to report Covid-19 numbers. While many hospitals (about 91%) are still voluntarily reporting Covid-19 data to the CDC, the agency has discontinued its prior count of new Covid-19 patients as this reporting is now less comprehensive.
In place of its discontinued chart, the CDC is now directing users of its data dashboard to a reporting system called COVID-NET, which estimates hospitalization rates based on detailed reporting from a smaller number of facilities (about 300 in 13 states) — similar to the CDC’s system for flu. We’ve switched to this data source at The Sick Times as well, but will regularly remind readers that it is less comprehensive. Meanwhile, the federal government is accepting comments on a proposed rule that would restart mandatory reporting from hospitals in the fall.
One driver behind recent potential increases in transmission is the variant KP.2, which caused about one-third of new Covid-19 cases in the U.S. between April 28 and May 11 according to CDC estimates. In recent years, new variants have regularly amplified the Covid-19 spread driven by a lack of widespread safety measures to cause waves of infections every few months. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently postponed its decision about which variant would be used for this fall’s Covid-19 vaccines, likely to adjust based on recent variants — but more long-term, collective measures would be needed to truly decrease transmission.
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