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 1 in every 100,000 people was hospitalized for Covid-19 during the week ending June 8. (Note that these are provisional data.)
- Covid-19 test positivity has increased 17%, from 4.6% of Covid-19 tests returning positive results during the week ending June 1 to 5.4% of tests during the week ending June 8.
- Healthcare visits for influenza-like illness have decreased 10% between the week ending June 1 and the week ending June 8, and these visits are below the baseline for respiratory virus season.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 6% between the week ending June 1 and the week ending June 8, and the national wastewater viral activity level is low, per the CDC.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has increased 23% between the week of June 3 and the week of June 10, per Biobot Analytics.
- SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater has decreased 2% between June 3 and June 10, per WastewaterSCAN.
California and nearby West Coast states continue to bear the brunt of this summer’s Covid-19 surge so far, with high wastewater levels and increasing burden on the healthcare system. Data signals are mixed for other parts of the country as newer variants continue to spread.
Nationally, the three major wastewater data providers agree that SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater have been going up over the past month, but disagree on the magnitude of that increase: Biobot Analytics reports a higher increase in the first week of June, at 23%, than the CDC and WastewaterSCAN.
The dashboards also all agree that the West Coast, especially California, is reporting the greatest acceleration in coronavirus levels — but disagree about other regions. Biobot reports increases in all four regions, while WastewaterSCAN and the CDC report increases in the South, with plateaus or slower increases in the other regions (Northeast and Midwest). The Covid-19 picture in these regions will become clearer in the coming weeks as newer variants from the FLiRT family continue to spread.
California’s status as a Covid-19 hotspot has finally led to some local news stories, weeks after wastewater data sounded the alarm. SFGATE, for example, covered the high coronavirus levels in the Bay Area. “Currently we are seeing some of the highest concentrations we’ve ever measured” at some wastewater treatment plants in the region, WWSCAN data analyst Amanda Bidwell told the publication. Test positivity and emergency department visits are increasing in the region as well.
WWSCAN’s latest data, as of June 12, suggest that the summer wave in California may have reached its peak, but it will take another week or two to say for sure. Meanwhile, it’s important to note that California has more wastewater testing sites than any other state on the West coast: California has 68 sites, compared to 23 in Oregon, 29 in Washington, and just 10 in Nevada, Idaho, and Montana combined, per the CDC. As a result, it’s likely that these other states are experiencing similar increases in Covid-19 spread, but we lack visibility into those patterns.
As summer travel and gatherings continue to help the latest variants spread, other parts of the country may see similar large Covid-19 increases in the coming weeks. The last thing we need right now is mask bans in public spaces, yet some local politicians are enacting or threatening these dangerous policies. Learn more with this call to action from the People’s CDC.
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